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Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.
With the passing of Judge Roy Bean, who referred to himself as the “Law West of the Pecos,” the rowdy frontier lost one of its most unique and picturesque characters. It was Judge Bean that was said to have held an inquest on the body of an unknown man found in his precinct, and, finding on the corpse a pistol and $40 in cash, proclaimed the dead man guilty of carrying a concealed weapon and fined him $40, which was forthwith collected from the pocket of the offender.
There were no customers from Judge Roy Bean’s opera house and saloon by his side when he died on March 16, 1903; no friends from the Langtry, Texas, community where he had resided; no lawbreakers to be tried and sentenced. Judge Bean’s son, Sam, was the only one with him when he passed.
The stout, seventy-eight year old man with a gray beard spent his last hours on earth in a near comatose state unaware of where he was or whom he was. He died of heart and lung complications exasperated by alcohol.
To learn more about Judge Roy Bean and others like him who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.
