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Pistol Pete’s Payback and Other Historic Vengeances

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 31 min

World War II - Quisling — Quisling with SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Cotton Boll Conspiracy

27. Payback Begets Payback

Although brothers Wyatt and Virgil Earp had nabbed Frank Stillwell, the charges against him were eventually dropped. In addition to insufficient evidence, Stillwell had managed to rustle up alibi witnesses. The Earps, in their capacity as US Marshalls, then charged Stillwell with the federal crime of tampering with a mail carrier. That created a perception that Stillwell was being persecuted. As payback, Wyatt’s brother, Morgan Earp, was assassinated.

Witnesses reported seeing Stillwell fleeing from the scene, and a Coroner’s jury listed Stillwell among the suspects in the assassination. Out for payback, Wyatt Earp formed a posse and went after the suspects in the murder of his brother Morgan, and an earlier shooting of his other brother, Virgil. Two days after Morgan’s assassination, Wyatt Earp heard that Stillwell planned to murder his brother Virgil in Tucson when the train carrying him and Morgan’s coffin to California stopped there. The stage was set for Wyatt Earp to get his payback.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.