The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  Two years later, Long Necked Charley Lazure, granted a governor's pardon on May 4, 1887, heard the prison door close behind him. Thereafter he either kept a low profile and dropped from sight or changed his name again.

  S66 a190. WHITEHILL, HARVEY HOWARD

  LEE, A. Mitchell (a.k.a. Mitch) (1863-1884)

  This Texas cowboy entered history for the first and only time when he drifted into western New Mexico and recruited associates named Christopher "Kit" Joy, Frank Taggart, a black cowhand, and George Washington Cleveland. They robbed the Southern Pacific train near Gage Station on November 24, 1883. In the process, they murdered the train engineer. Lee was soon arrested, but on March 10, 1884, he and his friends broke out of the Silver City jail, only to be recaptured swiftly. Surrounded by irate posse members, with a rope around his neck, and urged to get right with Jesus, an exasperated Lee finally blurted out "Well, by God! I did kill that train engineer." At that moment the wagon rolled out from under him, and Lee swung out into eternity.

  .S+'' rO; CLEVELAND, GEORGE WASHINGTON; JOY, CHRISTOPHER; TAGGART, FRANK

  LEE, Beauregard (1868-1900)

  Born in August 1868 in Virginia to James and Susan Lee, Beauregard moved with his family to Raton, New Mexico, where he grew into a tall, dashing, and very enterprising detective working for the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fe Railroad. By March 1895, he already had quite a reputation for careful police work and fearlessness when he decided to try his hand at tracking the New Mexico desperado Martin Mrose and his wife, Beulah. Although every competent lawman in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas was looking for the pair, Beauregard Lee was smart enough to stake out the hotels in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. He soon spotted an attractive woman, with a four-year-old daughter, who fit the description. Keeping the woman under surveillance, he learned she had purchased a train ticket deeper into Mexico. Lee enlisted the help of Mexican policeman Francisco Haro, and on April 6, 1895, the two boarded a train and followed the woman. In Chihuahua City a large man resembling her husband approached and embraced her, and Lee rushed up and placed him under arrest. It was one of the most sensational arrests of the day.

  The authorities released Beulah Mrose, and she moved to El Paso, Texas, to live with her attorney, John Wesley Hardin. Martin Mrose went to jail in Juarez but was later freed. He was shot to death on June 29, 1895, by officers after he crossed the Mexican railroad bridge into El Paso.

  Beauregard Lee made several trips to El Paso after that, appearances no doubt having a lot to do with the reward money. In 1897, he married in Raton, New Mexico. He and his wife separated after a couple of years, and she took their young son to Chicago.

  According to family tradition, Lee was slain by outlaws sometime in 1900.

  .36-6 W. HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; MILTON, JEFFERSON; MROSE, HELEN; MROSE, MARTIN; SELMAN, JOHN HENRY

  LEE, Oliver Milton (1865-1941)

  Oliver M. Lee (Author's Collection)

  New Mexico rancher and accused murderer Oliver Lee started life at Buffalo Gap, near Abilene, Texas, and in 1884 moved to New Mexico, settling on a ranch near Dog Canyon on the west side of the Sacramento Mountains, only a short distance from Alamogordo, New Mexico. A series of feuds soon developed, and Lee came under suspicion regarding the deaths of several ranchers, even though his Dog Canyon Ranch and Circle Cross brand quickly became dominant in the region. On February 12, 1893, Lee and nearby rancher William McNew killed cowboys Matt Cofelt and Charles Rhodius near El Paso, claiming both had been rustlers.

  Three years later, in February 1896, near Chalk Hill, on today's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Col. Albert J. Fountain and his eight-yearold-son, Henry, turned up missing. Oliver Lee, William McNew, and Jim Gilliland became the immediate suspects, the reasoning being that Fountain had recently obtained cattle-rustling indictments against Lee.

  Pat Garrett, the Dona Ana County, New Mexico, sheriff, now took to the field in search of these men but was himself captured, and a deputy was slain, when both tried to slip up on the outlaws at Wildy Well on the Lee Ranch.

  Lee and New Mexico state senator A. B. Fall now arranged for the creation of Otero County in southern New Mexico, where the wanted men could surrender to Sheriff George Curry. Nevertheless, Garrett still took Lee and Gilliland to trial in Hillsboro, New Mexico, for the Fountain murders. Both were acquitted. On February 29, 1908, when Garrett was mysteriously slain while traveling in a buckboard not many miles from the Lee Ranch, Oliver Lee's name surfaced as a murder suspect. However, no indictments ever came down.

  Lee later became a New Mexico state senator, well known around the state and in the Southwest. He had nine children and died in Alamogordo.

  S615- aISO FOUNTAIN, ALBERT JENNINGS; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS

  LEE-PEACOCK Feud

  The renowned historian C. L. Sonnichsen, in his Texas feuds book III Die Before III Run, discussed the "Lee-Peacock feud," but the struggle itself was much broader than that-in fact, so broad that the Lees and Peacocks almost get lost in it. In a sense it began with John Hugh "Irish Jack" Dixon, who moved from Indiana to Illinois to Missouri, and in 1858 migrated into Pilot Grove in Grayson County, Texas, where he farmed. Grayson, Fannin, Hunt, and Collin Counties intersected at Four Corners, near that site; there thickets lured renegades, des

  peradoes, Union sympathizers, and Confederate deserters. During Reconstruction, Jack entered the freight-hauling business with his sons Billy, Simpson (Simp), Bob, and Charles, plus Dick Johnson, a half-brother.

  Bob Lee, one of John Dixon's cousins, a handsome, tall, and muscular man, had fought in the Confederate army under the brilliant cavalry commander Gen. Nathan Forrest. Back in Texas, Lee clashed verbally as well as physically with Lewis Peacock, a former Missouri wagon maker who lived near Pilot Grove. Peacock also organized the Union League; one of the men he recruited was Henry Boren, a Unionist but also a cousin of Bob Lee.

  As the feud heated up, on June 6, 1868, Bob Lee wrote a letter to the Texas News accusing the Union men led by Lewis Peacock of dragging him out of his sickbed and leading him into the thickets near Pilot Knob, where they took his mule, saddle, bridle, and a $20 gold piece. He had then agreed to leave the country forever after signing a note to them for $2,000 in gold. The note was written by mixing water with gunpowder for ink and using a toothpick for a pen. Lewis Peacock had then shot Bob Lee in the face, left him for dead, and shortly afterward murdered a doctor who treated him.

  Reprisals came quickly. Peacock was wounded, and two supporters, Dow Nance and John Baldoc, slain. The U.S. Army then became involved, with Gen. J. J. Reynolds posting rewards for Bob Lee, dead or alive. A year later, in June 1869, as Bob Lee left his ranch house, cousin Henry Boren shot him dead on the porch. Henry then rode home to a dance already in progress in his house.

  A day later, Bill Boren, a cousin of Henry's who had served with Bob Lee in the Confederate cavalry, rode up to Henry Boren's home, called Henry out, and shot him dead on the porch. He later explained it with a letter written to Henry's brother:

  I know that you are we that my feelings were against the Union, and Henry was with us at the first . . . I felt no anxiousness when Henry joined the Unionist cause as we had neverseen eye to eye on matters anyway, and I though that this was just another dispute, but this friendliness with the Peacock faction against Cousin Bob Lee was a thorn in all our sides. Still I felt no anxiousness. Then Henry stained the proud Texas name of Boren with the blood of cousin Bob Lee.

  Bill Boren also mentioned costs paid by other families. "Haven't we all lost a brother in this cause?" he asked. "I know you will recall that my brother Isham died at the hands of the same Unionists and war mongers that Henry saw fit to join up with."

  Meanwhile, the Dixons fared just as harshly as the Borens. They too had supported the Bob Lee faction. Peacock partisans and U.S. soldiers surprised 16year-old Billy and Charlie while the Dixons were hauling cotton to Jefferson, Texas. They captured both brothers at Hog-Eye, lashed them
to a wagon wheel, and whipped them. Billy died, and his slayers looted his body, taking even his spurs.

  The Peacock faction next ambushed Jack Dixon and his sons, Bob and Charlie, plus Dick Johnson, while the Dixons were cutting timber at Black Jack Grove. Bob and Charles died. Jack and Dick, wounded, crawled into the brush and escaped. After the assassins had left, Dick loaded the two dead family members into an ox cart and took them home for burial.

  A few years later Johnson had his revenge. On June 28, 1871, a Galveston newspaper called Bulletirr wrote to the Lee-Peacock feud, writing that "we are credibly informed that the famous Lewis Peacock, formerly commander-inchief of the Peacock Party, was shot to atoms this morning in his yard. May God grant this sinful world, peace."

  SEE a190: DIXSON, SIMPSON; HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY

  LEES, Isaiah Wrigles (1830-1902)

  This famous San Francisco detective was born in England but migrated to New Jersey, where he became a mechanical engineer. By 1849 he had arrived in California in the Gold Rush. There he worked as a miner before a chance encounter with a San Francisco policeman led him to solve a murder that resulted in San Francisco's first legal hanging, that of Jose Rodriquez in December 1852. A year later Lees joined the police department and rose quickly to captain as well as detective. He started a rogues' gallery, taking daguerreotypes of arrested criminals. He studied cause and effect, clipping crime stories out of newspapers and magazines, taking care to record names, ages, descriptions, and modus operandi. He poured over criminal materials and corresponded with detectives around the world.

  His crime library numbered over a thousand volumes. These and scrapbooks altogether consumed a large room, where one could always find him actively at work. It all paid off as he cracked one celebrated case after another, even traveling to other countries in response to requests for his expertise. In many instances he made his own arrests, being shot, clubbed, kicked, punched, and stabbed on several occasions. When he retired as chief of the San Francisco Police in 1900, he was a legendary figure, one of the world's best known detectives. William Pinkerton called him "the greatest criminal catcher the West ever knew." He died on December 21, 1902, and is buried in San Francisco's Laurel Hill Cemetery.

  LeFORS, Joe (1865-1940)

  This lawman, one of six children, originally came out of Lamar County, Texas, but grew up in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). LeFors made several cattle drives to Kansas, hauled mail, fought Indians, and worked as a trader. By the mid-1880s he was driving cattle into Dodge City, running wild horses, and hiring out to the Wyoming Land and Cattle Company. He learned to speak Sioux and to talk in sign language. As a livestock inspector, however, he went after the cattle rustlers. In particular, he led cattleman invasions into the Hole-in-the-Wall country, sometimes being driven out himself and sometimes recovering batches of livestock and shooting a few rustlers. At one time he had 17 men locked in the Newcastle, Wyoming, jail.

  Due to his successes, he became a U.S. deputy marshal with headquarters in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and began concentrating on train robbers. Meanwhile, the famous scout and manhunter Tom Horn had come under suspicion for the slaying for hire of 15-year-old Willie Nickel. Horn mistakenly had killed the son instead of the father. Horn and LeFors sat in a room drinking and talking, discussing aspects of their careers; but unknown to Horn, LeFors had stationed a court reporter and a U.S. deputy marshal in an adjoining room. They took notes regarding the conversation, and although Horn denied he ever confessed to killing Willie, he went to the hangman's rope.

  In 1908, Joe LeFors went to work for the Wool Growers Association and did his best to bring peace between sheep men and cattlemen. After that he lived briefly in Argentina before returning to California. He then moved back to Buffalo, Wyoming, where he died on October 1, 1940.

  .366 '+ Cc ; HOLE-IN-THE-WALL; HORN, TOM

  LeROY, Kitty (1849-1870)

  This actress, or "jig dancer," as some called her, had moved from Dallas to Deadwood, South Dakota, during the 1870s. There she allegedly married 27 men while still finding time to dance in all the community's major gambling houses and theaters. She then married faro dealer Sam Curley, who apparently knew little or nothing about her background. Sam killed her when he found out; he later shot himself.

  LESLIE, Nashville Franklin (a.k.a. Buckskin Frank Leslie) (1842-1920?)

  By some accounts the gunman Buckskin Frank Leslie was born in Galveston, Texas, although he once claimed that his father's name was Kennedy and his mother's name Leslie. He was an army scout during the 1870s, serving in the Dakotas, Oklahoma, and Texas. By 1878 he had hit San Francisco, where he attended bar and opened his own saloon before drifting to Tombstone, Arizona, arriving with Tom Horn around September 1880. Here he filed on several mining claims and worked as a bartender in the Oriental Saloon, reportedly the finest saloon between St. Louis and San Francisco. In his off hours, for sport, Leslie supposedly shot flies off the ceilings of less prominent Allen Street saloons. Leslie also had a bent for painted women, and in Tombstone he became involved with Mrs. Mike Killeen. When the husband objected, Frank and a friend, George Perrine, on June 22, 1880, put several bullets in him. The husband died a few days later. A couple of weeks after that, the widow married Buckskin Frank.

  On March 15, 1881, someone held up the Bisbee stage, killing the driver and a passenger. Buckskin Frank led the posse, but for all his tracking skills, the posse just went in circles. Leslie later reportedly told Wyatt Earp that Sheriff John Behan had paid him to lead the posse astray. Leslie remained friends with Earp, but he was never a close associate. As for the feud between the Earps and the Clantons, Leslie did his best to avoid involvement.

  Two years later in July, Leslie reportedly killed the famed gunman John Ringo. However, that slay

  ing remains as mysterious now as it was then, and few historians believe Leslie pulled the trigger. Leslie had always been noted for embroidering on the truth.

  On November 14, 1882, he killed the red-headed, hot-tempered William Claiborne, often known as Billy the Kid Claiborne. The Kid had challenged Leslie outside Tombstone's Oriental Saloon. The two met in the middle of the street in something akin to a classic "high noon" walkdown. Claiborne fired first, but Leslie fired straight.

  Leslie lost his job at the Oriental and turned to ranching in the Swisshelm Mountains, 20 miles south of Tombstone. Growing bored with that, he scouted for the army during the Indian wars. In 1886, he worked briefly as a mounted customs inspector before returning to ranching. His wife, the former May Killeen, divorced him for adultery in September 1887. (She returned to Tombstone, married a freight hauler, moved with him to the West Coast, and died in Banning, California, on March 27, 1947.)

  Leslie now spent much of his time in the Tombstone Birdcage Theater, where he met a bosomy, hard-drinking singer named Mollie Bradshaw. She already had a boyfriend, but when the fellow turned up dead in an alley, she and Buckskin retired to his ranch. However, when Leslie rode home on the evening of July 10, 1889, he found Mollie and a hired man called "Six Shooter Jim" wrapped up in each others arms on the front porch. Leslie shot Mollie first and Jim second. Jim survived to testify, and on January 9, 1890, Leslie was sentenced to life in the Yuma Territorial Prison. In prison he worked as a druggist and practiced good behavior. Governor Franklin gave him a full pardon on November 17, 1896. Two weeks later, on December 1, the 55year-old Leslie married the 39-year-old, divorced Belle Stowell, who had corresponded with him.

  At this point, Buckskin Frank Leslie seems to have dropped from sight. Stories are that he became a drifter, living and drinking and fighting in San Francisco, trying his luck in the Alaska gold rush, and mopping saloons in California. Rumors exist, but there is no evidence that he committed suicide around 1922. In any case, no one ever recalled seeing him again.

  c; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP; HORN, TOM; RINGO, JOHN PETERS; YUMA TERRITORIAL PRISON

  LEVY, James H. (1842-1882)

  Back at the turn of the 20th century, when journalists and moviemak
ers first captured America's attention with thrilling exploits of western heroes and badmen, they passed over James H. "Jim" Levy. They shouldn't have.

  Levy, a Jew, was born in Ireland but emigrated to the United States. Before long he reached eastern Nevada, stopping at Pioche, a rough and tumultuous mining camp. By 1871, Jim was considered a gambling man with a bad attitude. In front of Freudenthal's General Store, during an argument over $5,000, Levy shot Mike Casey, then violently battered him with a six-shooter into permanent unconsciousness. In retaliation, Dave Neagle, an up-and-coming gunfighter, commenced shooting at Levy, one bullet puncturing both of Levy's cheeks and shattering his jaw. From that point forward Jim Levy's poisonous disposition matched his evil-appearing exterior. In 1873, Jim Levy was arrested for killing Thomas Ryan, although he got cleared of the charges due either to a lack of evidence or because no one was foolish enough to testify against him.

  Levy now left for Virginia City; in 1876 he moved to Deadwood, in the Black Hills country of Dakota Territory. During March of 1877, Jim made appearances at Cheyenne, on one occasion getting into a row at the Shingle & Locke Saloon with fellow gambler Charlie Harrison. Although accounts vary, it appears that Harrison didn't like Irishmen, or Jews, and he unwisely boasted of that to Levy's face. The two quarreled. Harrison left, only to return and find Levy leaning against a post in front of French's Saloon at the corner of Eddy and 16th Streets. Harrison quickly pulled his revolver and emptied it. Unflinching and unscathed, Jim Levy dropped Harrison with one shot, then casually walked over to the prostrate and helpless cardsharp and shot him again. Levy stuck his six-shooter in his waistband, strolled around the corner, and ordered oysters for supper. There he was arrested; he was later released.