Great American Crime Stories

by Bill Bowers

  This letter was written on April 23rd. Five days later Asle Helglean read that the Gunness house had been burned and that Mrs. Gunness and her three children had died in the flames. He took the train to Laporte, and told Sheriff Smutzer his story. Then Joe Maxson, a new hired man of the murderess, spoke about some “soft spots” in the garden. Digging began, and the first body turned up was the dismembered body of Helglean.

  A few feet away the body of a young woman, supposedly Jennie Ilsen, was found. In all ten corpses were unearthed, three being of women. Whether Mrs. Gunness died in the fire or, as is believed, substituted a corpse, killed her children, burned down the house and fled, may be disclosed at the trial of Ray Lamphere.

  Mrs. Gunness has willed her property, in reversion, after her children’s death, to the Norwegian Orphans’ Children’s Home in Chicago.

  18

  Brothers Felipe Nerio Espinosa & José Vivian

  Felipe Nerio Espinosa and his brother José Vivian were among the most notorious, and vicious, murderers in American history. Evidently they were bent on vengeance over losses of both family members and property they had suffered during the Mexican War. They killed at least thirty men, using guns, axes, and knives, often mutilating their victims in the most gruesome fashion imaginable. Several posses attempted without success to capture or kill the elusive Espinosas. In the spring of 1863, legendary scout, mountain man, guide, and bounty hunter Tom Tobin (whose father was an Irish immigrant and whose mother was Native American), hunting the killers alone, tracked them down and shot them at their makeshift camp. Tobin cut off their heads (as proof of death, so he could collect the reward). Army Colonel Sam Tappan, who had enlisted Tobin’s help, gave him a Henry repeating rifle to show his gratitude.

  The Story of Dead Man’s Canon and of the Espinosas

  As Told by Henry Priest to Elsie Keeton

  I have heard so many different stories as to why Dead Man’s Canon is so called that I am going to tell the true story about it. I came to Dead Man’s Canon with my parents from Buckskin, Colorado, on March 12, 1863. At that time there was no road through this canon. It was just a wide canon filled with majestic pines.

  Henry Harkens, the man who was murdered a week later, met us in what later became known as Dead Man’s Canon and piloted us to the place where we were going to live. This place was just below where the Fountain Water Works stand, on what is now the Mary Helen Ranch. We had known “Uncle” Harkens, as every one who knew him called him, for two years before he came down from Buckskin. He was one of the best and kindest of men, always ready to help anyone in trouble, and loved by all who knew him. At the time he came to Dead Man’s Canon he was about fifty-five years old, and he was not murdered by his partner for his money, as I have often heard, nor by Indians, but by a couple of Mexican desperadoes by the name of Espinosa, who went through Colorado in 1863, slaying white men wherever they found an opportunity to do so.

  Harkens and three other men, McPherson, Bassett and Judd, had bought a saw mill in Canon City, and were moving it to Dead Man’s Canon, which was then called Saw Mill Gulch. Our house was just a mile from where they were setting up the mill. Two teams and seven men had come over with the first load of machinery and while here, the men had cut logs and built the cabin where Harkens was afterward murdered. Four of the men went back to Canon City after more machinery and their families, which left Harkens, McPherson, and Alden Bassett to work on the mill while they were gone.

  On Wednesday, March 19, 1863, Harkens worked all day on the cabin, daubing it and hanging a blanket for a door. McPherson and Bassett worked on the mill, and my father and I worked all day on the hill near where Paul Dingel’s house now stands, where we were building a road to haul lumber away from the mill when it got to running. At quitting time that evening McPherson and Bassett went to the cabin, got their gun and sixshooter, and told Harkens they were going down the canon to see how Priests were getting along with the road while he got supper, and as they left, Harkens threw down his trowel preparatory to getting the wood with which to cook supper.

  As we found out afterwards, the two Espinosas had lain up on a little bluff about a quarter of a mile from where Harkens and the two men were working, and had watched them at work on the mill and cabin all day. They had their horses picketed there, and as soon as they saw McPherson and Bassett leave the cabin they had evidently mounted their ponies, rode down to the cabin, and murdered Harkens.

  When McPherson and Bassett got in sight of the cabin on their return from the road, McPherson remarked, “I wonder what’s the matter that the old man hasn’t got a light?”

  “You must remember he daubed the cabin today and hung a blanket for a door, so we couldn’t see a light if he had one,” replied Bassett.

  It was getting dark when they reached the cabin, and the first thing that met their gaze was Harkens, lying dead within six feet of the cabin door, his head split open with the ax, and two ugly gashes in his left breast. McPherson thought the murderer must be in the cabin, so cocked his gun, and with the barrel cautiously pushed aside the blanket which served as a door. There was no one in the cabin, but everything was topsy-turvy. McPherson’s suitcase had been slashed open with a knife and the contents were scattered about the cabin, and there was a great white splotch on the floor just inside the door, where the Mexicans had emptied a hundred pound sack of flour they found in the cabin. That frightened McPherson and Bassett nearly out of their wits, for they thought the woods were full of Indians and they fully expected to be scalped any minute, so they took to their heels and ran every step of the way to my father’s house.

  Father and I had quit work on the road and were preparing to sit down to supper when the door was burst open by McPherson and Bassett. They were so breathless from their long run they could scarcely speak, but finally managed to tell us that Harkens had been murdered, as they supposed, by the Indians.

  Father wanted to go right over and put the body in the cabin where it would be safe from wild beasts, but mother and McPherson and Bassett were so frightened and so sure he had been killed by the Indians they would not let him go, so we stood guard all night and at daybreak father started down creek to the nearest ranch, five miles distant, for help. When he reported the killing there a man rode on to Fountain, which was five miles further, and reported the murder there, and by noon there were twenty-five men at our house, and we all went over to Harkens’ cabin to see what had happened to him and whether there were any Indians about. We found Harkens had been shot in the middle of the forehead with a Colts Navy revolver, then the murderers had taken the ax and split his head open from the top to the mouth, and then, judging from the appearance of his head and the ax, they had hit him on each side of the head with the head of the ax, and two pieces of skull and his brains lay on the ground at the top of his head. He was also stabbed twice in the left breast; two four-inch gashes about three inches apart. He must have been killed shortly after McPherson and Bassett started down the canon, for he had not yet cut the wood with which to cook supper.

  The murderers must still have been ransacking the cabin when they heard McPherson and Bassett returning, for judging from their pony tracks they had mounted them and hastily ridden away toward the red cliffs west of the cabin. They had ridden right through the pine tree tops, which were scattered about where the logs for the cabin had been cut, and in one pile of the tree tops we found a chunk of beef they had lost in their flight. They rode back to the red cliffs where there was a sheltered place in a gulch by a ledge of rock and here we found they had evidently cooked their supper; then they mounted their horses and had taken the old trail to Colorado City. This old trail passed within a few rods of father’s house, and while we were standing guard the night of the murder the bandits must have passed right by us.

  As we could find no more traces of the murderers, we prepared to bury Harkens. We chose a spot on a little knoll under a sheltering pine tree, and while th
e other men were digging the grave I stood guard up on a bluff where I had a fair view up and down the canon. While they were digging I spied two horsemen coming at a brisk pace down the canon and I hastened to tell the diggers. When the riders arrived they proved to be a sheriff and his deputy from Hardscrabble, and they told us the Espinosas had murdered an old man by the name of Bruce, at the head of Hardscrabble, the day before they murdered Harkens, and at about the same hour. The sheriff said Bruce had apparently walked to the door of the blacksmith shop and the Espinosas had shot him several times. The sheriff and his deputy did not stop long and were soon off again on the trail of the bandits.

  We learned that the murderers had killed a beef on Turkey Creek, at what is now called Aiken’s Spring. (This spring was once owned by Mr. Aiken, father of Charles, Jessie and Mrs. Fannie Aiken Tucker, all of Colorado Springs, and is on the Glen Cairn Ranch, now owned by Mr. A. N. Jordan of Colorado Springs.) The bandits had cut about ten or twelve pounds out of the ham of the beef and left the rest. The meat we found in the tree tops back of Harkens’ cabin was without doubt a piece of the beef they had killed at Aiken’s Spring.

  After the sheriff and his deputy had gone, we resumed our sad work. My father took small logs, and in the grave they had dug he laid the logs as though building a cabin, only he fitted them together as closely as he could. Then we lined the box with fragrant boughs and in this rude casket we placed the body, covered the top tightly with little poles and boughs, then covered all with the soil, and on a rough headstone we carved the words:

  “Henry Harkens, Murdered Wednesday Eve., March 19th, 1863.”

  The sheriff and deputy from Hardscrabble followed the Espinosas to Colorado City, up through Manitou and on up through Ute Pass, and were first to find two men the bandits had murdered after Harkens in Dead Man’s Canon, and they returned to Colorado City and reported that murder there.

  From there the Espinosas went to South Park and killed wherever they caught a man alone. They waylaid cabins, roads and mining camps and murdered ruthlessly wherever they found an opportunity to do so. Finally six cavalrymen were sent after them and chased them all summer, but never got a glimpse of them. When the bandits reached California Gulch and killed two or three miners there, it aroused the wrath of the whole camp, and twelve old miners shouldered their guns and took the trail of the bandits. They caught up with the Espinosas at Cripple Creek, at what is now called Espinosa Peak. The bandits were camped on top of that peak, and there the miners had quite a battle with them and killed the oldest bandit, but the younger one escaped. In the camp where Espinosa was killed the two bandits had nothing to eat except half of a beaver. On Espinosa’s person the miners found an article of agreement that they, the Espinosas, were to kill six hundred whites in revenge for the loss of their money and property during the Mexican War. They had treated the older men they killed much more brutally than they did the younger ones, presumably because they reasoned the older men had had more to do with the Mexican War than the younger men had. Where Espinosa was killed they found all the bandits’ camping equipment except what the one who escaped took with him. Espinosa had only two or three dollars on his person when killed, but among his effects they found Harkens’ gold rimmed spectacle frames, McPherson’s gold watch and chain (worth about $25 or $30), his old-fashioned satin vest with embroidered flowers on the front, and his day-book. They also got the bandits’ guns, revolvers, bowie-knives, ponies and saddles.

  The younger bandit went back to Mexico, got his nephew, a boy twelve years old, and started out again.

  The State offered a big reward for their capture, and Tom Tobin, an Irishman and an excellent marksman, killed both of them near Fort Garland, Colorado, and got the reward, though in small installments, receiving the last payment on it shortly before he died.

  “And that,” said the old-timer in conclusion, “is the story of Dead Man’s Canon.”

  So the reason the name of Saw Mill Gulch was changed to Dead Man’s Canon was because Henry Harkens was murdered there, and there, within fifty feet of the Colorado Springs-Canon City highway, where the morning shadows of Indian Head Ledge fall cool and deep, and the afternoon sun silvers the needles on the pine that has guarded it so faithfully all these years, is Harkens’ grave; a totem faintly scrolled along the trail of the pioneers.

  19

  The Loomis Gang

  The Loomis Gang was a family of criminals who operated in central New York State (especially Madison, Oneida, Otsego, and Onondaga Counties) for decades until about 1866. The numerous sons of George Washington Loomis and his wife Rhoda formed the nucleus of the gang, which had powerful connections and many confederates in the area. Rhoda raised her children to be criminals and to steal, punishing them only for getting caught. Specializing in the theft of horses and livestock (they sold countless stolen horses to the Union Army during the American Civil War), the Loomises also committed robberies and burglaries and fenced stolen goods. The Loomis Gang grew very rich from their ill-gotten gains, and if any member were arrested and charged, he or she always seemed to have the best legal representation that money could buy. Frequently evidence of their crimes mysteriously disappeared, witnesses fell silent, and bribed local officials saw to it that convictions were exceedingly rare. Because George and Rhoda had so many children, there are also many descendants of members of the Loomis Gang, some of whom were perversely proud of their criminal ancestors. Others tried to distance themselves. One of these, famed poet Ezra Pound (originally Ezra Weston Loomis Pound) changed his name to avoid the association with some of his forebears.

  The history of the Loomis family has never been written. For over sixty years they set the law at defiance, and were at last uprooted only by the strong arm of a vigilance committee. A report of the Prison Association, made to the Legislature in 1865, says that the family have grown rich by thieving. Their children are educated in the best and most expensive seminaries. They dress genteelly, their manners are polished, and they appear to good advantage in society. They rule the counties of Oneida, Oswego, Otsego, Madison, Chenango, Schoharie, Delaware, and Sullivan with a rod of iron.

  They have numerous well-trained confederates in all of these counties, who are ready by day or night, at a moment’s warning, to ride off in any direction for the sake of plundering or for the concealment or protection of associates who are in danger of falling into the meshes of the law. These men have been indicted times without number in the above named counties, but none of them have ever been convicted, nor have any of them been in jail for a longer time than was sufficient for a bondsman to arrive at prison. There are farmers, apparently respectable who belong to the gang and share in its profits. Whenever bail is needed, substantial farmers come forward and sign the bonds without regard to the amount of the penalty. The family exert a great political influence, and are always ready to reward their friends and punish their enemies, both at the primary conventions and at the polls.

  Although they have been repeatedly indicted, the number of their indictments bears but a small ratio to the number of their depredations. It usually happens that any one who is particularly active in bringing any of the gang to justice has his barn or dwelling burned, or horses are missing from the stable, or his sheep or cattle from the pasture. These things have been done so often that cautious men are careful how they intermeddle by seeking to bring the members of the gang to justice. If a man so intermeddling happens to have a mortgage on his property, it is very soon foreclosed. If he has political aspirations, thousands of unseen obstacles interpose to prevent the fulfillment of his hopes. If he is a trader his custom falls off. If he is a physician malpractice is imputed to him, or other stories are circulated to his discredit, and at length matters come to such a pass that his only resource is to quit the country. All who make themselves conspicuous as opponents of the family are in some way made to feel the effect of a thousand blighting influences.

  Although the law has been
powerless when exerted against the gang, they have been in the habit of using its energies with great effect against those who stood in their path. We are told with great circumstantiality, by men worthy of confidence, of numerous instances in which, under skillful manipulations, the forms of law were used to punish innocence and shield robbery.

  The finest horses stood in the barnyard night and day saddled and bridled, ready for use at a moment’s warning. In early times they were the Kentucky Hunter stock, but were afterwards changed for Black Hawk and Morgan stock.

  A relative of the family says the old lady was quick tempered. At times she was very devout, and spent hours reading the Scriptures. She frequently boasted how many times she had read through her Bible. One of her sons-in-law says that she set her face against all wrong doing; but this does not agree with accounts given by neighbors. They accuse her of inciting young visitors to petty peculations and crimes.

  The [sic]were led to the house by Wash, who invited them to ride behind his fast horses, and studied their characters. If they were licentious, the attraction was blooming girls who had been brought to the mansion as servants on promises of good wages, and started upon an infamous career. If they were given to drink, the best liquors were set before them. At night the teams were harnessed, and the whole party sped away on a lark. The young fellows were on the road to crime before they knew it. When they were about to leave the house, the old lady would place her hand on their arms and say: “Now, don’t come back without stealing something, if it’s nothing but a jackknife.” The first time they might return with the carcass of a sheep or lamb, or a tub of butter. Their dexterity was praised and the fruits of the marauding were placed upon the table. There were generally from three to half a dozen young men from 17 to 20 years old about the house. Sometimes they served as pickets, and gave timely warning of the approach of strangers and officers of the law. The most of the thieving and barn burning was done by these young rascals, the Loomises acting as receivers and disposers of stolen goods. They did the planning, and their young pals carried out the work.