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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

28. The Outlaw Who Took on the Wild West’s Most Famous Lawman

Frank Stillwell. The American Cowboy Chronicles

Born in Iowa, Frank Stillwell (1856 – 1882) ended up in Arizona in 1877, where he had his first recorded run-in with the law: he shot a cook dead for serving him tea instead of coffee. In 1879, he staked a claim and worked a mine in Mojave, Arizona, when he got into a dispute with a fellow miner over claim-jumping. Stillwell settled the dispute by grabbing a rock and smashing in his rival’s face until he was dead. He was arrested for murder, but charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

Stillwell was hired as a Cochise County sheriff’s deputy in 1881, but was fired soon thereafter for “accounting irregularities”. A few months later, he robbed a stagecoach near Tombstone, Arizona, and was tracked down and arrested by lawmen Wyatt and Virgil Earp. That began a feud that ended in one of the Wild West’s most dramatic ambushes and payback episodes.

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.