The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  By now the El Paso Salt War had broken out. John Kinney led a band of New Mexico roughneckswhich probably included Billy the Kid-to San Elizario, Texas, where they terrorized more than they helped. Kinney reportedly killed four Mexicans. Even the Texas Rangers, themselves a rather rowdy group, did not speak in flattering terms of the New Mexico contingent.

  Following the Salt War, John Kinney opened the Exchange Saloon in El Paso, the press describing it as "a hangout for the most parasitical." Kinney was indicted for a killing; charges were dropped, and Kinney and his Mesilla Valley warriors rode north and became involved in New Mexico's Lincoln County War. He and his boys helped torch the Alexander McSween home, causing Mrs. McSween to accuse him of arson and murder.

  After the "war," Kinney returned to the Mesilla Valley and went on trial for the murder of Sheriff Barela. A jury found him not guilty. During the following year, when Billy the Kid was tried in Mesilla after a change of venue for the murder of the Lincoln County sheriff William Brady, John Kinney became part of the guard escorting the Kid to Lincoln for a hanging that never took place.

  John Kinney (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)

  Kinney returned to Rincon, reactivated "the Boys," and continued selling beef to outlying slaughter houses. Pretty soon there wasn't a steer to be found anywhere around Mesilla; residents protested, and the governor sent Col. Albert Jennings Fountain to investigate and halt the thefts. With the pressure on, Kinney tried slipping into Mexico via the rail junction at Lordsburg. However, New Mexico authorities caught him on March 5, 1883, and escorted him in irons to Las Cruces for trial. A jury took eight minutes to find John Kinney guilty. It assessed a $500 fine and five years in prison.

  In 1886, Kinney appealed for a new trial and was released from prison. Charges were dropped before the case even returned to court. Kinney subsequently moved to Prescott, Arizona, where he died of Bright's disease on August 25, 1919. His newspaper obituary described him as "one of the most daring and courageous ... of men who were sacrificing and unflinching to preserve law and order."

  S66 a190: BILLY THE KID; EL PASO SALT WAR; EVANS, JESSE J.; FOUNTAIN, ALBERT JENNINGS; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR

  KIRCHNER, Carl (1867-1911)

  This Texas Ranger started life in Bee County, Texas, and became a first sergeant in July 1895. He worked

  primarily from far West Texas to the Big Bend area, killed several men, and was with Capt. Frank Jones when Jones gave up his life during a gun battle with Mexican desperadoes at Pirate Island, near El Paso, Texas, on June 30, 1893.

  Kirchner retired shortly afterward and opened the Silver King Saloon in El Paso, after marrying a lady from San Antonio. In 1911, he crossed the Rio Grande into Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, to view the stacks of dead left by the First Battle of Juarez during the Mexican Revolution. He caught typhus from them and died at his El Paso home on January 28. He is buried in El Paso's Concordia Cemetery.

  S66 019c . JONES, FRANK

  LANE, James Henry (1814-1866)

  James Lane, a six-foot, lean, and cadaverous politician, was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, lived there half his life, developed fiery oratorical abilities, became lieutenant governor of the state, practiced law, served in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as the Lawrenceburg City Council, and became a colonel during the Mexican War. He moved to Kansas in 1855. He also joined and led the Free State Party, sometimes known as Lane's Brigade. There he became the "Grim Chieftain." Here also he met Charles R. "Doc" Jennison, whose antislavery pillagers became better known as "Jayhawkers." Jennison and his marauders joined Lane's Brigade, pillaging Fort Scott, Kansas, in a sweep that took them all the way to Osceola, Missouri. By now the maniacal Lane had taken to calling himself "the great jayhawker." He advocated an expedition through Oklahoma and into Texas, the stated purpose being to free slaves wherever found.

  Kansas became a state in 1861. Lane became a colonel, a U.S. senator, and a brigadier general, all the while recruiting men for his "Independent Mounted Kansas jayhawkers," a guerrilla collection of brutes more interested in blood than freedom. Their activities brought them into conflict with the Missouri Bushwhackers, an odious opposition force supporting the Confederate cause. The Bushwhackers and the Jayhawkers, practically all of them murderers, arsonists, and looters, brought multiple miseries to Kansas.

  As the Civil War closed down, with Unionists placing the various states under Reconstruction government, the crazed Senator Lane correctly perceived himself as declining in leadership and influence. During a black depression, he shot himself in the mouth and died 10 days later.

  ANDERSON, WILLIAM C.; QUANTRILL, WILLIAM CLARKE

  LARN, John (1849-1878)

  John Larn was reportedly born in Mobile, Alabama, but drifted out to Colorado in his early teens and killed a rancher over the ownership of a horse. In the summer of 1871, when he was 22 years old, he became a trail foreman for Bill Hays, a well-known stockman around Fort Griffin, Texas. During that same year he and 11 cowboys drove a herd of 1,700 cattle north along the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Colorado markets.

  Henry Griswold Comstock, a Wisconsin native, wrote an account of the Larn and Hays trek many years later, describing it as a drive that bypassed the inspection stations and was punctuated by frequent murders. According to Comstock, Larn killed two Mexican drovers who were simply passing through and tossed their bodies into the Pecos River to "feed the catfish." Near Fort Concho, Texas, he had a confrontation with "buffalo" (black) soldiers seeking a better count of his cattle. The soldiers finally backed down. Larn later killed a Mexican sheepherder for no other reason than that he was there.

  In Colorado, Hays had trouble selling the stock and couldn't leave, so he sent Larn back to Texas to protect his cattle interests. When Hays returned to Texas, however, he noticed that Larn owned practically as many cattle as he did, so Hays and his brother John took most of them and left. When he was 40 miles from Fort Griffin, Texas, however, Larn caught up with him. During a wild battle, both Hays boys were killed. Four cowboys surrendered; within days they were slain "while trying to escape."

  Back home near Camp Cooper, Texas, John Larn married Mary Matthews, the daughter of a prominent Shackelford County cattleman. They settled on land soon known as the Camp Cooper Ranch.

  Shackelford County in those days had its Old Law Mob, better known as the OLM, a group of vigilantes who evolved into the Tin Hat Brigade. Larn was a member, and so was John Selman, a would-be gunman and cattleman who had recently moved into the area with his wife and children. On February 15, 1876, Larn became sheriff of Shackelford County, and William Cruger and John Selman were his two deputies. On April 2, 1876, Larn and deputies (vigilantes) caught up with the Bill Henderson gang of rustlers. Those who were not shot were lynched. One of those lynched had a sign pinned on his shirt: "He said his name was McBride, but he was a liar as well as a thief." On June 2, the Tin Hat Brigade took two men out of Larn's jail and lynched them too. On December 28, 1876, the noted, "No wonder the highwaymen are seeking security east of the Colorado. Eleven men were hanged ten days ago at Fort Griffin, and four more are enroute to that merciful village."

  On the evening of January 17, 1877, two of Larn's friends and associates, Billy Bland and Charlie Reed, thoroughly intoxicated, came riding into Griffin, swearing, yelling, and firing six-shooters. Dismounting, they stomped inside the Bee Hive Saloon, where they continued their rampage. The evening ended with Bland dead, Reed leaving the country, and several more or less innocent bystanders wounded and dead. First Deputy William R. Cruger had done much of the shooting but Larn blamed Cruger for Bland's death.

  Larn resigned as sheriff on March 17, 1877, and Cruger took his place. On April 28, Larn and John Selman were appointed deputy inspectors of hides

  and animals for Shackelford County. It was a license to steal, a permit to shake down ranchers and brokers. However, a rift grew between Larn and Selman on one side, and the other ranchers and businessmen on the other. Larn and Selman withdrew in anger from
the Tin Hat Brigade. Even Larn's father-in-law, the well-known and highly respected rancher Joseph Beck Matthews turned against his son-in-law.

  Selman had sense enough to pack up his family and leave the county. Larn knew he had troubles, but hoped he could overcome them through relationships and ties. He couldn't. On the night of June 22, 1878, a group of Tin Hat members gathered while Sheriff Cruger and deputies took Larn into custody and transported him to the Albany jail, where chains and shackles were fastened to his legs. Late that night, he was awakened by masked men-some say nine, some say more. At least one was a brother-in-law. Because they knew him, they decided not to lynch him. Instead, nine rifles cracked in the night air. Larn's wife Mary took the body home and buried it in the backyard of the Camp Cooper ranch house, where a tombstone marks the grave today.

  .366 -213o CRUGER, WILLIAM R.; SELMAN, JOHN HENRY

  LAUSTENNEAU, W. H. (a.k.a. Three Fingered Jack) (1869-1906)

  W. H. Laustenneau was a firebrand. The Austrian's hand had been damaged in an industrial accident or a bare-knuckles barroom brawl of undetermined origin, but because of the deformity, Mexicans called him (crippled hand). Americans dubbed him "Three Fingered Jack." Otherwise, some folks called him a desperado, while others simply used the term "agitator." But wherever he went, Three Fingered Jack Laustenneau either stirred up trouble or inspired others to do so.

  He debuted at the Morenci copper mines in southeastern Arizona Territory, at the behest of an anarchistic extremist group based in Chicago. With Progressive movement gaining strength throughout the United States, the Arizona legislature in 1903 passed an eight-hour workday limitation for underground miners "except in cases of emergency where life or property were in eminent [sac] danger." The resultant consequence of shorter workweeks naturally led to a decrease in wages, facts agitating to the miners and labor union activists. Labor demanded more money. Management resisted. All the while, Three Fingered Jack fueled the fires of discontent.

  On June 1, 1903, roughly 3,000 miners walked off their jobs as Three Fingered Jack extolled the virtues of union membership. He advocated the destruction of mine and railroad property, as well as the pillaging of company-owned stores. Threats like this brought the Arizona Rangers as well as the Arizona National Guard to the scene. The federal government dispatched troops from Forts Grant and Huachuca. A military contingent of soldiers arrived from Texas.

  Arizona Rangers Johnny Foster and Bud Bassett swiftly arrested Three Fingered Jack Laustenneau, while a horrific thunderstorm helped cool the other boiling tempers. In the end, that thunderstorm probably saved lives, even though up to 20 local residents drowned in the torrential downpour. Three Fingered Jack continued to organize convicts, activities earning him two years in the Yuma Penitentiary. There he incited work stoppages and threatened to clog prison administration with frivolous lawsuits. Those threats earned him solitary confinement. As he sweated and stewed for nearly three months in the dungeon, Laustenneau plotted. Finally, he was returned to the prison mainstream, but he was not a broken man.

  On April 28, 1904, accompanied by 14 other prisoners, Three Fingered Jack led an assault on the lockup's armory, in the process taking Superintendent Frank S. Griffith and his assistant hostage. Alert guards, however, fired into the rioting prisoners. They wounded three. The others, including Jack, surrendered.

  For his leadership and participation in the attempted outbreak, Three Fingered Jack received an additional 10 years. However, two years later, on August 20, 1906, Laustenneau died in the prison hospital. The jail physician said he died of "apoplexy caused by inner rage at his personal confinement."

  ARIZONA RANGERS

  LAW And Order

  As a general rule, a sheriff was the chief law enforcement officer of every county in every state. He generally had as many deputies as county finances would allow. As for the communities, they generally had a chief of police or city marshal, who also had as many assistant marshals or policemen as finances would

  allow. A city marshal or sheriff's duties in the old days often involved shooting stray dogs, keeping order in the saloons, showing up at legal hangings, rounding up jurors, and occasionally clearing stray cattle off the streets. A lawman may or may not have had a badge, and except in the larger cities he seldom wore anything that could be identified as a uniform. Residents generally recognized their officers by sight, and those who did not usually got acquainted in a hurry.

  Every hamlet and large city also had its justices of the peace, these officers having a smattering of legal experience. While they could make arrests, as a general rule they handled the paperwork after arrests were made.

  A few states, such as Texas, had rangers, a system that worked quite well; the Texas Rangers still exist. Other states, such as New Mexico and Arizona, tried similar ranger law enforcement systems but discarded them after a brief period.

  United States marshals, and deputy marshals dealt with crimes that were federal in nature; these lawmen were especially active in the territory of Arizona and in the Oklahoma Territory. Once a territory became a state, the marshal's power diminished somewhat; he now had jurisdiction only for federal offenses, such as selling liquor to the Indians and mail robbery.

  Execution in the American Wild West practically always meant hanging, firing squads coming in a very distant second. Trials tended to be quick, appeals even quicker. The period between verdict and execution could range from several weeks or months down to hours or even minutes. Jail and prison conditions ranged from dismal to brutal. There was no such thing as rehabilitation, except as a well-meaning but obscure concept.

  See ako: ARIZONA RANGERS; FEDERAL MARSHALS AND DEPUTY MARSHALS; JAILS AND PRISONS; SHERIFFS; TEXAS RANGERS

  LAY, William Ellsworth (a.k.a. Elza Lay; William McGinnis) (1868-1934)

  Elza Lay-the "Elza" no doubt coming from his middle name-was born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, on November 25, 1868. Soon after his birth, his farming family began moving west until it reached Colorado. By that time Elza was old enough to strike out on his own. He drifted into Vernal, Utah, probably met Butch Cassidy, and opened a gambling hall, where he allegedly passed counterfeit money. The government closed that down, so in 1896 he wandered over to Brown's Park, where he and Butch Cassidy reportedly peddled counterfeit currency smuggled in from Canada.

  By some accounts Elza Lay, and not Butch Cassidy, masterminded the initial string of Wild Bunch train and bank robberies. On August 13, 1896, the Butch Cassidy gang, still in the process of formation, rode into Montpelier, Idaho, and robbed the bank. On April 21, 1897, the gang robbed the Pleasant Valley Coal Company. Elza now drifted south, hooked up with the Black Jack Ketchum outlaws, and in July 1899 helped rob a train at Folsom, New Mexico. By most accounts, the outlaws rode away with $70,000, but also with a posse in pursuit. During a wild shootout in Turkey Creek Canyon, two lawmen died, and the outlaws Sam Ketchum and Elza Lay were badly wounded. Sam was captured but died later of his wounds.

  In August of that same year, Sheriff Cicero Stewart captured Lay in Eddy County, New Mexico. A jury convicted him of the murder of Huerfano County, Colorado, sheriff Edward J. Farr, killed during the gun battle in Turkey Creek Canyon. A jury gave him life in prison, but in 1906 the governor pardoned him in return for helping quell a prison riot. He married, raised two daughters, worked as a gambler in Mexico, became head watermaster for the Imperial Valley Irrigation System, and spent a period on Skid Row in Los Angeles. He died at Los Angeles on November 10, 1934, and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.

  See aISO: BROWN'S PARK; CARVER, WILLIAM RICHARD; CASSIDY, BUTCH; CURRY, GEORGE SUTHERLAND; KETCHUM, SAMUEL W.; KILPATRICK, BENJAMIN ARNOLD; LOGAN, HARVEY; SUNDANCE KID; TURKEY CREEK CANYON, BATTLE OF WILD BUNCH

  LAZURE, Charley (a.k.a. Charley Hadley, T. H. Thorne; Long Necked Charley; Rattlesnake Dick) (1859-1881)

  Little is known about the origins of Charley Lazure, and even less about his exit from the panoramic western stage. Maybe that's the way history intended it to be, since he was
an outlaw and evidently not a successful one. From the best information at hand, it appears that "Long Necked Charley," among other aliases, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. At the age of 16, the tall and skinny lad drifted to southwestern

  New Mexico Territory, via short sojourns in Colorado and Santa Fe, during 1882. Somewhere along the line, he either shot himself in the thigh or someone did it for him. The details are a mystery.

  Reportedly, he worked in the mines at Eureka in southern Grant County, but he later chose the life of a rustler, becoming a working member of what was often referred to as the Old San Simon Gang. If in fact he was the guilty party who stole a horse and a mule from a Mr. Dobbins, he gave the pursuing posse the slip somewhere in the Sulphur Springs Valley of Arizona.

  On August 15, 1883, at Tombstone, his luck ran out. Officers accompanied the manacled prisoner during the train trip back to New Mexico, where at Separ, the no-nonsense Deputy Dan Tucker took custody of "Long Necked Charley." At the next day's hearing, the complainant failed to show, so Lazure was released, to the displeasure of townsmen grown tired of rustlers and thieves.

  At Silver City, in 1885, he and a man named Cunningham involved themselves in a gun duel. The authorities again arrested Long Necked Charley, but he was released on a bond posted by the ex-sheriff of Grant County, Harvey Howard Whitehill.

  Charley showed up next 11 miles west of Silver City at the bubbling mining camp of Fleming, a rough town doing its best to keep Chinese and Mexicans from working there. Here Charley stole two horses from Thomas Kendall, one of Fleming's founding fathers. The young outlaw then rode to Socorro, New Mexico, where he was arrested at D. Z. Moor's livery stable by Sheriff Charles T. Russell. It was a case beyond reasonable doubt, since Charley still had the two stolen steeds. Delivered back to the county seat at Silver City for trial, he was found guilty and sentenced on August 2, 1885, to two years in the territorial penitentiary at Santa Fe.