Therefore, using his hunting knife, he sliced flesh from the breast and ribs of his former companions. He pushed the flesh into his packs and for two weeks, surviving on the meat of former comrades, he worked his way toward the Los Pinos (Indian) Agency, arriving in February 1874. Here the military and civilians took in the frozen, half-starved Packer, briefly accepting his story that the others in his party had wandered off and frozen to death.
However, as Packer started recovering, he began drinking too much and spending the money of his former comrades. This led to questions about where he had obtained that kind of cash. On April 4, 1874, several strips of human flesh turned up as the nearby snow melted. This led to Packer's arrest, and a long involved tale of how the men took to fighting, how Packer had been the only survivor, and how he had sliced away the human flesh to stay alive. Packer swore that he and a man named Bell had survived, and when Bell attacked him, he had slain Bell in selfdefense.
The army now ordered Packer to return to the cabin with lawmen, who would examine the scene. There it quickly became apparent that Packer was a mass murderer, but by the time the search party returned to the agency, Packer had disappeared. In fact, he vanished for over nine years until being arrested near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, where Packer had changed his name to John Schwartz. He went on trial in Lake City, Colorado, on April 13, 1883, a jury finding him guilty of murder and sentencing him to death. After Packer sat in the Gunnison City jail for three years, the supreme court reversed the decision.
In 1889, Packer won a new trial, the charges now reduced to manslaughter. Again he was found guilty, this time being sentenced to 40 years. He entered the Canon City prison, but he behaved himself, and through efforts of two Pct publishers who wanted to exhibit him in a circus, he was released in 1901. (The publishers by this time had both been shot and wounded by an attorney named William W. [Plug Hat] Anderson, who was tried for assault three times and finally acquitted.) After that Packer worked as a cowboy, dying in a bunkhouse on April 24, 1907. As a humorous adjunct to the earlier trial, Judge Melville Gerry is reputed to have said, upon passing his death sentence, that "There was seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you et five of them, God Damn ye."
PACKING Iron
This means carrying weapons, concealed or otherwise. It refers specifically to six-shooters, rifles, or shotguns. Any outlaw or lawman would be considered as packing iron, even though the weapons might not be readily visible. The phrase also carries a more ominous connotation, that one is not only carrying weapons but is prepared (and perhaps eager) to use them.
PARKER, Fleming (1866-1898)
Fleming, born in California, was an ambitious man who turned to crime and spent five years in San Quentin for burglary. After being released, he headed for Arizona, where in February 1897 he and a friend robbed the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad at Peach Springs. The friend was slain, and the law jailed Parker in Prescott. During a May 9 jailbreak, Parker escaped, but not before he and others had slain the assistant county attorney. The Tuba City, Arizona, authorities arrested him, and on June 4, 1898, he became the last man hanged on the courthouse plaza at Prescott, Arizona.
PARKER, Judge Isaac (a.k.a. Hanging Judge) (1838-1896)
Hanging Judge Parker is undoubtedly the most famous judge in western American history. Born in Maryland, he moved to Ohio, received his bar appointment in 1859, and then settled at St. Joseph, Missouri, where in 1864 he became state's attorney for the 12th judicial Circuit. In 1870, a Republican, he was elected to Congress, where he convinced President Ulysses Grant to appoint him to the judgeship at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Parker arrived on May 2,
1875, at 36, becoming the youngest judge on a federal bench. He would be there 21 years. His sector included the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and the Western District of Arkansas, areas overrun by renegades and desperadoes. Two hundred U.S. deputy marshals patrolled this vast region, and over time 65 of them were murdered.
Parker tried 18 people for murder during his first two months on the bench. Fifteen were found guilty, and six were sentenced to death. Although never a great judicial intellect-many of his decisions were overturned on appeal-during judge Parker's 21 years, he presided over 13,000 criminal cases and sentenced 160 of those found guilty to be hanged, the largest number ever given the death penalty by any judge in U.S. history. Seventy-nine were actually executed on the Fort Smith gallows. The president commuted 46. Two others died in jail, two were pardoned, and two were slain while attempting to escape.
Judge Isaac Parker died on November 17, 1896, shortly after Congress removed the Indian Territory from his jurisdiction. He is buried in the National Cemetery at Fort Smith, Arkansas.
PARKER, Robert Leroy
.366 BUTCH CASSIDY
PARRA, Geronimo (?-1900)
After rustler Geronimo Parra killed Texas Ranger Charles Fusselman in the Franklin Mountains near El Paso, Texas, in 1890, he fled to New Mexico, where authorities sentenced him to the Santa Fe Territorial Penitentiary for unrelated crimes. In the meantime, Dona Ana County, New Mexico, sheriff Pat Garrett sought Texas fugitive Pat Agnew for questioning in the murder of New Mexico's Col. Albert Jennings Fountain. The rangers agreed to find Agnew if Garrett would use his influence to get Geronimo Parra released from the Santa Fe prison and turned over to Texas authorities. The capture and swap duly took place.
Parra went on trial in El Paso for Ranger Fusselman's murder and was sentenced to be hanged in the El Paso County jail on January 6, 1900. Another convicted El Paso murderer, Antonio Flores, was ordered hanged at the same time.
The men passed their time in adjoining cells on the second floor of the courthouse. The trapdoor yawned just a few steps away. On the day of execution, in a crowded jail corridor, the cell doors were opened, and to everyone's astonishment both men charged out with homemade knives, inflicting minor injuries on several officials. The brawl ended with officers throwing Parra back into his cell and dragging Flores to the trapdoor, pulled a hood down over his head, adjusted the rope, and dropped him into the room below. As the authorities hustled Parra to the trapdoor, however, jailers below were unable to loosen the rope from the neck of Flores. Finally, they hauled Flores up, stretched him out at the feet of Parra, loosened the rope, removed it, soaped it, then slipped it around the neck of Parra and dropped him too. These were the last legal executions in El Paso County.
cthc FOUNTAIN, ALBERT JENNINGS; FUSSELMAN, CHARLES; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; TEXAS RANGERS
PARROTT, George (a.k.a. Big Nose George) (?-1880)
This desperado once claimed he entered the world on April 13, 1843, in Dayton, Ohio, but few took him seriously. All that's really known is that he had a reputation as a murderer and horse thief when he rode through Montana and moved into Wyoming's Powder River area in the late 1870s. He and his gang planned to rob a train, but Carbon County deputy sheriffs Robert Widdowfield and Henry Vincent were tailing them. The outlaws ambushed the lawmen near Elk Mountain, shooting Widdowfield in the back of the head and Vincent in the legs and chest. Both died, but by year's end most of the gang except for Big Nose Parrott had been captured and prosecuted.
Carbon County sheriff James Rankin subsequently took Parrott into custody, but had not even jailed his prisoner before the vigilantes threw a rope around the outlaw's neck. The sheriff intervened, and Parrott made it to trial, where a judge sentenced him to be hanged in April. Parrott quickly broke out and tried to flee, not getting far before the sheriff had him in custody again. Big Nose had no sooner been tossed back in jail, however, than the vigilantes wrestled him out and slipped a noose around his neck. They were in the process of yanking him high from the arm of a telegraph pole when the rope broke. Parrott fell and hit the ground, with most of the rope, dangling loosely over the cross-bar, trailing from around his neck. He again jumped up, turned, and darted up a ladder leaning against the pole; the vigilantes let him climb. Grabbing the other end of the dangling rope, they pulled on it, jerked him off the ladder, and watched him swing
from the crossbar. After a while he was lowered, but when a local doctor refused to pronounce him dead, the vigilantes pulled him high again. This time he pleased everyone by having died.
Someone made a plaster mask of the dead man's face, while some others cut skin from his chest and fashioned a pair of shoes from it. The brain bowl of his skull became a flower and pin pot as well as a door stop for a local doctor's office. The remainder of the body disappeared, not turning up again until September 1895, when workmen digging a foundation for a store in Rawlins, Wyoming, came across the remains sealed inside a buried whiskey barrel.
PEACEMAKER, Colt .45
The name "Peacemaker" had a lot to do with the popularity of this weapon. Peacemaker in itself said it all. This single-action army six-shot revolver became the first cartridge handgun ever made. It originated in 1871, and the army picked it up in 1873. But in 1874, civilians started clamoring for it. It used 40 grains of black power behind a 235-grain lead bullet. Civilians, however, insisted on a shorter, 4.75-inch barrel, and so the manufacturer cut almost three inches off the military model. Due to the popularity of the 1873 Winchester, most westerners wanted the same ammunition to fit both rifle and sixshooter. So the Peacemaker was retooled to a .44-40, meaning .44 caliber and 40 grains of powder.
The Peacemaker balanced well in the hand, cost only a few dollars, and could absorb incredible abuse while continuing to be dependable. It remains a popular modern weapon primarily because of movies and books, and because the "Peacemaker" still has a certain "American" ring to it.
PERRY, Samuel R. (1844-1901)
Frank Warner Angel, sent by Washington, arrived in New Mexico Territory to facilitate an investigation into the Lincoln County troubles. During this process, he interviewed Samuel R. Perry, a special investigator who noted in his papers that he considered Perry reliable but of no standing. Most newspaper editors were less charitable.
Sam Perry, a Mississippi boy, was born on the last day of July 1844. By the time he was grown, Sam sported a handlebar (killer) mustache and had an unexplained bullet wound in his hip that somewhat retarded him when walking. By whatever route, Sam then made it to New Mexico Territory in time for the chaos and confusion better known as the Lincoln County War.
Sam Perry allied himself with the Murphy-Dolan faction and rode with several posses. One posse on February 18, 1878, caught up with the young Englishman John Tunstall and murdered him. By most accounts, Perry, who was bringing up the rear, was not present when the homicide took place. He told the investigator that after "laying out" Tunstall's body he had heard pistol shots and was advised that some of the crowd "had been shooting at a mark on a tree." The shooter may have been Tom Hill (Chelson), William "Buck" Morton, or Jesse Evans. (It was later claimed that Tunstall had resisted the serving of legal papers and had fired his revolver at posse members, and that therefore he had been killed in self-defense. Perry had placed Tunstall's pistol next to the body.)
Later, during the "the Five-Day War," in which Alexander McSween was killed, Sam Perry occupied the rock tower built by early Lincolnites as a defense against Apache attack. Perry huddled there with such notables as J. B. "Billy" Mathews and the notorious and thoroughly dangerous Jimmy McDaniels. The resultant siege, strategies, fires, shootouts, allegations, and counterallegations have by this date been recorded in numerous volumes, so no attempt will be made to document them here.
Following the Lincoln County War, Perry could not stay out of trouble. He went to trial twice on rustling charges and horse theft but refuted the charges and was found not guilty.
On July 16, 1879, near Hillsboro, New Mexico, on the west side of the Rio Grande, just below the Black Mountains, Samuel Perry shot and killed a cowboy named Frank Wheeler. The generally accepted account is that Wheeler slipped some of Perry's cattle off to a sale barn and afterward refused to relinquish the proceeds to an infuriated boss. One newspaper editor said, "Now if Perry would die of remorse the honest people of this county would sleep more soundly."
Instead, Perry moved east across the Tularosa Basin, settling in the Sacramento Mountains. In his
fifties, he married Eolin Bates, a sister-in-law of J. B. Mathews. But the marriage ended when Eolin's mother-in-law arrived from Mississippi and moved in with the newlyweds. On November 7, 1901, Samuel R. Perry, was found dead near Sixteen Springs, just east of present-day Cloudcroft. He had either jumped or fallen off a wagon and landed on his head. Sam Perry thus died from a cracked skull, not remorse.
See co; ANGEL, FRANK WARNER; BILLY THE KID; EVANS, JESSE J.; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR
PHENIX, New Mexico
Phenix was like a lot of once-promising western towns. It began as a speculative venture by Eddy County, New Mexico, surveyor A. B. Nymyer in November 1892. It was a reaction to the Pecos Valley Town Company's rigid enforcement of deed restrictions in the county seat of Eddy preventing the sale of alcohol within the city limits. The little town of Phenix-also called "Jagtown: Oasis of the West," or "Hagerman City,"-was located a mile south of Eddy, on the same side of the Pecos River. Its first saloon was H. A. Bennett's "The Legal Tender," but within two years the little town had developed into a Las Vegas of the Old West. Its largest saloon was Ed Lyell's Silver King, but there were at least a dozen others, including the Adobe, the Ranch, and Two Brothers. These saloons attracted brothels and cribs of the worst sort. Shootings and robberies were so common that Sheriff Dave Kemp assigned the town a permanent deputy, Lon Bass. But even so, violence continued. The saloon district burned in 1893 when a barrel of whiskey exploded, but in just a few months the town rebuilt itself, bigger and brassier than ever. Nevertheless, hard times-a financial panic, a great flood-struck Eddy County in 1893. Ed Lyell divided his business interests with his silent partner, Sheriff Dave Kemp, and relocated Phenix to the mining camp of Globe, Arizona. In 1895 and 1896, restrictions on alcohol eased in Eddy, and a few establishments relocated there. By 1900, most of the businesses-and even the buildings-in Phenix had shifted to Eddy, which is today's Carlsbad, New Mexico. The last brothel closed in 1910, as Phenix faded into the desert. Today almost nothing remains of the once-bustling community.
See KEMP, DAVID LEON
PICKETT, Thomas (1856-1935)
Tom Pickett was born to a religious family in Wise Country, Texas, the third of 10 children, on May 22, 1856. His father, George, owned a large ranch and became a Texas legislator as well as a justice of the peace. Tom spent a year (1876-77) in Company B of the Texas Rangers, although during this period he was charged with, but never prosecuted for three counts of cattle theft. By the fall of 1879, he had become a policeman in Las Vegas but lost his nerve on January 20, 1880, following a gunfight that did not involve Pickett but did involve Police Chief Joe Carson. Desperadoes killed the chief, and Pickett took to bed upon learning of Carson's death. Three weeks later he arose and returned to duty. The following May he resigned to become assistant city marshal at White Oaks, New Mexico. In this instance, he lasted but a month, stepping aside after an unknown party fired a shot that grazed his cheek.
Oddly, for a man who took to bed at practically the mention of blood, Tom Pickett now teamed up with Billy the Kid, apparently having met the Kid at Las Vegas or White Oaks, New Mexico. Pickett subsequently was with the Kid when Sheriff Pat Garrett surprised the gang at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, during Christmas week of 1880. Pickett escaped along with the others, only to be captured in company with the Kid shortly afterward at Stinking Springs. Garrett then herded his prisoners to Las Vegas, where the sheriff inexplicably turned Pickett loose-perhaps because of law enforcement ties they had once shared. Eight months later, in August 1880, a Las Vegas grand jury indicted Pickett for cattle theft.
Pickett left town, only to resurface with three additional desperadoes at Seven Rivers, New Mexico, in January 1884. They rode out of town a day or so later, leaving five Hispanic resident males dead in the snow.
Come October 1890, a census taker found Pickett living alone in a cabin at Graham, Arizona, where the
local Democratic Party had nominated him as a delegate. Tom Pickett thereafter kept a low profile until 1902, when he ran afoul of a former Texas Ranger at Douglas, Arizona. Capt. Thomas Rynning ordered him out of town and gave him 15 minutes. Pickett heeded the warning and thereafter wandered in and out of the Southwest, staying out of serious trouble, spending years arguing for a military pension as well as medical treatment (and failing at
both). He died on May 14, 1953, at Pine Top, Arizona, and was buried in the Desert View Cemetery at Winslow, Arizona.
.366 4L50: BILLY THE KID; GARRETT PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; RYNNING, THOMAS
PINKERTON National Detective Agency
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency is probably the world's most famous private investigative institution, and it owes its name and its success to its originator, Allan Pinkerton. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and began his career as a security guard for President Abraham Lincoln. He also organized the federal secret service, and became its first chief. In 1860 he opened his own business, calling it the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Its motto: "The Eye That Never Sleeps."
After the Civil War, he furnished employees, known as Pinkerton Men, to private companies, especially firms having labor troubles. Labor unions rightfully considered them strikebreakers, and the Pinkerton name is still detested in the organized labor movement.
Pinkerton is best known for his operations against western outlaws. Although his firm was initially retained by the railroads to control workers, the Pinkertons owe much of their substantial fame to their relentless pursuit of train robbers. During this period, national police agencies such as the modern Federal Bureau of Investigation did not exist, so the Pinkertons established offices in several states and territories. They also added a roaming force of detectives who paid scant attention to state or county lines.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 40