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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

33. Systemically Exacting Payback

Frank ‘Pistol Pete’ Eaton in later years. Wikimedia

Frank Eaton’s next target was Doc Ferber’s brother, John. However, the night before Frank caught up with him, John Ferber was caught cheating at a poker game and killed. Frank attended the funeral, to make sure he was dead, before heading out after the next targets on his payback list. They were brother Jim and Jonce Campsey, who had a ranch in the Ozarks. Frank found them at home, challenged them to a duel, and shot both siblings.

The last survivor of his father’s killers was now Wyley Campsey, and Frank made it his life’s mission to find him. In the meantime, in 1885, Frank served as a scout in a campaign against Geronimo, and almost got scalped for his troubles. Afterwards, he reportedly got a job as a deputy US Marshall under “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory, and shot dead six more men in the line of duty. Then in 1887, he learned that Wyley Campsey was running a saloon in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So he headed west to visit payback upon him.

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.