7. The Wild West Outlaw Who Was Murdered by Wyatt Earp
In the 1870s an aspiring Wild West bandit named Johnny Ringo (1850 – 1882) moved to Texas, where he joined a gang. He and his crew made a name for themselves during a spate of lawlessness and revenge killings between factions of German settlers and native-born Americans in Mason County, Texas, that became known as the “Mason County War“. Ringo was arrested, but he escaped from jail and fled to Arizona. There, in 1878, he offered whiskey to a man seated next to him in a bar, but when the man declined, Ringo shot off his ear. Soon thereafter he arrived in Tombstone, where he joined the Cochise County Cowboys and began an antagonistic relationship with famous lawman Wyatt Earp and his brothers. The Earps suspected Ringo’s involvement in an 1881 ambush that left Virgil Earp crippled, and in the murder of Morgan Earp on March 18th, 1882.
The Aftermath
Shortly after Morgan Earp’s murder, Wyatt Earp, a deputy US Marshall, formed a federal posse to hunt down those deemed responsible for shooting his brothers. Tombstone’s corrupt sheriff deputized Ringo in an attempt to shield him from the Earps. Within weeks, many of Ringo’s friends lay dead or fled the area. Although he denied involvement in the shootings of Virgil and Morgan Earp, Ringo left Tombstone until things calmed down. The Earps left Tombstone a few weeks later, and Ringo returned. Big mistake. A month later, they discovered his body beneath a tree with a bullet hole in the head. The death was ruled a suicide, but many suspected that Wyatt Earp had surreptitiously returned to exact vengeance. That theory, confirmed years later by Wyatt’s widow, who wrote in her memoirs that her husband had killed Johnny Ringo.
