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The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

5. From Outlaw to Lawman

John King Fisher. Texas State Historical Association

Although John King Fisher was a notorious troublemaker, he was well-liked in the community. So well-liked, in fact, that by the 1880s he had transitioned from bandit to lawman. In 1883, he served briefly as acting sheriff of Uvalde County, during which stint of service he tracked down a stagecoach robbing duo, shooting one dead and bringing in the other.

A year later, Fisher’s end came when he went to see a play with a friend in San Antonio, and a quarrel erupted between his friend and the theater owner. It ended in gunfire, with Fisher and his buddy ambushed in their theater box and cut down in a hail of bullets.

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.