Journal Notes

The Gold Rush of 1849 brought thousands into the foothills of Northern California. Everyone wanted to find a gold claim of their own and most were willing to work hard to make their dream come true. Not everyone who came west with the Rush were honest and industrious however. The influx of people included an evil admixture of adventurers and criminals. As miners went along the trails with pack animals, a long period of roadside banditry began. Brutal, cold-blooded robbers, some working in gangs, often shot down their victims on little or no provocation. The shotgun and the six-shooter ruled supreme in a day when might was master over right; when life was cheap and often brief. Bullets usually settled feuds and for years justice was administered by lynch law with rough and ready men acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Rarely were they criticized. For years theft brought stiffer punishment than murder because, as one writer explained, “human beings could defend themselves while property was helpless.” No mercy was shown to horse thieves and there were many of them. Typical of the spirit of the times was this item in The Alta California in February 3, 1851: “LYNCHING – A Mr. Bowen at Curtis Creek killed Alex Boggs by shooting him through the head at second fire. Several persons present thereupon seized Bowen, put a lariat around his neck, dragged him to a butchers’ shop to the place where they hang their slaughtered animals upon.” There were times when an innocent man was accused of a crime and hanged for something he didn’t do. That’s exactly what happened to Lucas Hood, a gold miner in the area around French Camp, California. A laundress in the camp was having an affair with a trapper but couldn’t bring herself to tell her husband the truth. He knew she had been with someone and after a heated argument she told her husband she had been assaulted by Lucas Hood. The outraged husband called several of his friends and neighbors together and told them what had happened. The laundress stood by and watched as the furious mob grabbed Lucas away from his claim, beat him, and hung him from the nearest tree. Several months later the laundress was caught with her lover and in a heat of anger confessed she lied about Lucas. In an effort to try and conceal what they had done, a coroner’s jury was promptly called together. They decided the best thing to do was to change Lucas’s cause of death from a “hanging” to “death from emphysema of the lungs.” I can’t help but wonder what happened to the laundress. Did she continue on as though nothing had ever happened? Did the people who helped destroy an innocent man go to church on Sundays? Act as missionaries to other camps, work their jobs like nothing ever happened? Did they sleep well at night? If the subject was ever brought up did they insist that they deserve peace? Did they justify the horror of what they did with excuses about how difficult their own life has been? When people won’t listen to their conscience, it’s usually because they don’t want advice from a total stranger.

In 1850, an anonymous letter from San Francisco arrived at a newspaper office in New York. It read, “A smart woman can do very well in this country – true there are not many comforts and one must work all the time and work hard but…it is the only country that I ever was in where a woman received anything like a just compensation for work.” One of the ladies I had the privilege of writing about a few years ago who lived out that claim was Elizabeth Blackwell. Blackwell was America’s first woman doctor. She was admitted to New York’s Geneva College in 1847 as a joke, and was expected to flunk out within months. Nevertheless, Blackwell prevailed and triumphed over taunts and bias while at medical school to earn her degree two years later. While in her last year of medical training, she was cleaning the infected eye of an infant when she accidentally splattered a drop of water into her own eye. Six months later she had the eye taken out and had it replaced with a glass eye. Afterward, American hospitals refused to hire her. She then borrowed a few thousand dollars to open a clinic in New York City, which she called the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. She charged patients only four dollars a week, if they had it, for full treatment that might cost at least two thousand dollars a day at the going rate. During the Civil War she set up an organization to train nurses. Women’s Central Association of Relief, which later became the United States Sanitary Commission. In 1910 at age eighty-nine she died after a fall from which she never fully recovered. A truly dedicated individual can do such remarkable things.

The popular biography and pictorial books, entitled The Cowboy and The Senorita and Happy Trails about the famous, singing cowboy duo Roy Rogers and Dale Evans will soon become a Broadway musical starring Grammy award winning country music star, Clint Black. Emmy and Three-time Tony award winner Thomas Meehan will collaborate with Joseph Meehan on the script with original music and lyrics written by Clint Black. Executive film producer and Emmy award winning author Howard Kazanjian co-wrote the books with western author Chris Enss, which are the basis for the musical. The Package is repped by William Morris Endeavor.

Rollo Tomasi is a metaphor for the criminal who gets away with the crime. Tomasi is a purse-snatcher, murderer, false-accuser, the one never held accountable for the evil they’ve done. The Old West’s version of Rollo Tomasi was known simply as PO8. PO8 was a highwaymen and stage robber. After stole from his frightened victims he left poems behind to brag about the job he did. One such poem read as follows: “Here I lay me down to sleep, to await the coming morrow. Perhaps success, perhaps defeat and everlasting sorrow. Let come what will, I’ll try it on my condition can’t be worse, and if there’s money in that box, ’tis money in my purse.” The poem was signed PO8. Law enforcement agents in the 1870s, believe the bandit and talent less poet was Black Bart, alias Charles Bolton. Detectives finally tracked the thief to a hotel in Northern California using the laundry marks found on a handkerchief left behind at the scene of the crime. He spent six years in prison and when he got out he returned to his life of crime. Police could never catch him a second time. Rumor had it that Black Bart had been killed by police. But when highway robberies persisted and ridiculous verses scrawled on a pieces of paper and signed PO8 continued to be deposited at the scene of the crime, there was doubt the police really did their job. According to one newspaper report from 1895, PO8 stole more than one hundred thousand dollars after his so-called death. PO8 was never held accountable for those crimes. I spent my morning dealing with prison officials trying to get the situation with my brother resolved. It’s a grueling undertaking brought on by the Rollo Tomasis and PO8s in this world. Whatever can be done to hold people accountable for the evil they do I’m going to do it. Even if I have to stand alone, I will not be afraid to stand alone. I’m going to fight for real victims. I’m going to fight for what’s right. I’m going to fight to hold people who destroyed lives accountable. Now, where’s my horse?! It’s time to ride.

Miracles happen and oh, how I pray they happen soon.

In 2001, an 11-year-old girl told a judge that her father raped her, sending the man to prison for nine years. Today, she admits that she lied. Now 23-years-old, Cassandra Ann Kennedy says made up the story because she was upset with her father following her parents’ divorce, The Daily News reports. Last week, authorities in Washington state finally released the father, Thomas Edward Kennedy, who was serving a 15 year prison term. All charges have been dropped thanks to the daughter’s statement, made in January. According to The Daily News: “Reached Friday, Thomas Kennedy, now 43, declined to comment, saying he’s simply trying to get on with his life. Longview police, who investigated both the initial allegations in 2001 and the details that later exonerated Kennedy, also declined to comment and referred questions to Baur.” Cassandra Kennedy told authorities that guilt prompted her to reveal the truth, according to the  Seattle Times. Cowlitz County Prosecutor Sue Baur says that the county will not take legal action against Kennedy, partly because authorities do not want to discourage individuals in similar circumstances from stepping forward. For more on this story, visit  The Daily News.

Beverly Hills, CA – Accomplished director Walter Hill is preparing to deliver another western to film audiences with the adaptation of the book Thunder Over the Prairie.  Published by Globe Pequot Press, Thunder Over the Prairie is the gripping, true tale of a murder in Dodge City in 1878 – and how legendary lawmen chased down the killer. Thunder Over the Prairie was written by Emmy award winning, executive producer Howard Kazanjian and western author Chris Enss. Hill, whose film credits include Broken Trail, the Long Riders, and Geronimo, will be writing the screenplay and directing the film. He recently completed directing the Sylvester Stallone movie Bullet to the Head.

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Depending on what newspaper you read, these men were either assassinated or killed in a fair fight.

Talking heads on news programs and morning radio shows have been voicing their outrages about the manipulation of a 911 call made by George Zimmerman in Florida.  An NBC affiliate edited the 911 call to sound vastly different from the actual report.  Whereas I appreciate the fury over the fact that news corporations report current happenings with half-truths, innuendos, and outright lies, their methods are not new.  Newspapers as far back as 1881, (and I’m sure it goes back even further than that) have reported on stories based more on what they want people to think than what actually occurred.  More than one newspaper covered the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, in October 1881, and each one had a different take on what went down.  Some newspapers were more biased towards the Earps and others were biased toward the Clantons and the McLaurys.  I’ve had personal experiences with misleading news coverage in the Kansas City, Missouri area.  I have about as much faith in their ability to do their job correctly as Andy Taylor had in Barney Fife.  There is a reason Andy made Barney keep his  bullet in his pocket and not in his gun.  He could hurt someone if the gun was loaded!  KMBC-TV should keep their microphones and  cameras in their pockets because they can and have hurt people.  When my brother Rick was arrested in 2006, the reported said that he had been “hanging around schools picking up young girls.”  The truth was that Rick was at the school at my brother and sister-in-laws’ request, to pick up his two nieces and take them home.   KMBC-TV used a half-truth and innuendo to sensationalize their story.  They also claimed my brother had prior arrests.  My brother’s last name is spelled E-N-S-S.  A background report was done by the authorities for a Richard E-N-N-S and that name did show as having prior arrests, but to affix that claim to my brother was a flat out lie.  The truth was my brother had no prior arrests or convictions.  KMBC-TV also claimed that Rick shook uncontrollably when he was led into the courtroom because he was “petrified.”  The truth was Rick had Parkinson’s disease and shakes uncontrollably because of his illness.  Guess no one at that station does any fact checking and why would they?  The truth is never as memorable as a lie.  KMBC-TV and its counterparts do not represent real journalism.  And if journalism schools keep kicking out reporters who’ve substituted attitude and ego in place of a reporter’s notebook newspapers, like the Kansas City Star, isn’t going to reflect real journalism either. Oh, and by the way, if you ever come across the story about Wyatt Earp’s sexual obsession with Greyhounds, just remember, all he said was, “I like dogs.”

Tombstone of Outlaw Rattlesnake Dick

If I’ve learned anything from the ordeal with my brother it’s that a lie will spread around the world before truth makes it around the block, and that truly evil people never die, they simply remarry. Which leads me to the Old West…the saga of the Western bad man contains many precarious escapes from execution or from death in battle. Frequently stories exist that such-and-such a bad man is still alive. Indeed, Curly Bills, Billy the Kids, and Jesse Jameses have popped up from nowhere in many places. These fabricated bad men “came back” are not always without grounds –some of them did come back! Ygenio Salazar, a Spanish explorer and a McSween fighter under Billy the Kid in the climatic fight of the Lincoln County war; Herbert M. Tonney, a Woodsdale warrior in the Stevens County (Kansas) war; and a Texas soldier named Sheppard, who drew one of the black beans in the Mier expedition (major battle at Cuida Mier on December 26 and 27, 1842 which ended with a costly Mexican victory)– all three of these men were shot down with bullets clear through their bodies in several places, fell on the field of battle, and feigned death. In each case their enemies inspected the bodies, ruthlessly kicking each to see if life was extinct; the ruse succeeded in saving the lives of three men, who escaped in the dark of the night. The next day, however, after the Mexicans had shot down the Texans who drew the black beans, Sheppard’s body was missing and he had left a trail of blood. So the ruthless Mexicans tracked him down and killed him, just when a wild new hope for freedom and escape had found birth in poor Sheppard’s tormented brain. However, Salazar and Tonney lived for many years after their escapes; and they thanked their lucky stars they were not detected. Gunfighter Bill Longley lived through his first hanging. Even after three doctors examined his dead body after the second hanging and pronounced him thoroughly deceased, there were many Texans who believed he was the devil incarnate and would return at any minute to descend upon their “holy-roly” meetings, marking his devastating course with death-dealing six gun slugs. Young Roy Bean was hanged my jealous California Mexicans and left for dead; they returned and found the rope but no Bean, who had been rescued by a pretty senorita. Likewise, Jesse James’ stepfather was hanged by Kansas jayhawkers and left for dead, but was rescued by friends just before expiring. There are many Californians even today who believe that Joaquin Murrieta was not killed by Ranger Harry Love in his surprise attack on the desperado’s camp. There were three Murrietas. Now, who can say which was or were killed? So convincing was the news that Polk Wells, a daring Western desperado, had been killed by a posse that his wife married a Mr. Warnica. When Polk reappeared in the flesh before his wife and their friends, they were greatly astonished. Postcards signed “Jesse James” were sent to all of Jesse’s friends saying that he was still alive, probably for no other reason than to cause a sensation. When things like these actually happened, it becomes more easily understood why many people in the Old West superstitiously believed that a bad man sometimes “comes back” from the dead.

The Old West frowned indignantly upon shooting anyone who was unarmed. Gunman Clay Allison refused to kill his unarmed avowed enemy, a Native American named Ground Owl. Marshal Wyatt Earp spared the main object of his vengeance, unarmed Ike Clanton, in the famous O.K. Corral fight. A fourteen-year-old sheepherder in Colorado and a feudist cowboy exchanged shots until the latter said, “Don’t shoot, I’m empty,” to which the boy responded, “Well, then, load up while I wait.” The cowboy started to reload, but considered that one good turn deserved another and rode off saying that he had had enough. In northwest Montana Bill Mayfield challenged a cardsharp enemy named Evans, who said, “I’m not heeled.” Mayfield snarled, “Well, go heel yourself then, and come back shooting.” In the ensuing fight Mayfield was killed, but he had abided by the code. In the Territory of Idaho a man named Clark shot another man named Raymond, who was unarmed. In the mob that hanged Clark as a result of the shooting, there were many respected citizens, who were enraged at the “murder.” It was “murder” when the deceased was unarmed and it usually ended up with a hanging bee. Hanging Bees served to hold many bad guys accountable for their misdeeds. Whenever a lawyer lied in court about someone on trial a lynch party got together to do away with the dishonest attorney. Think how few attorneys we’d have now if that tradition was still upheld. Prosecutorial misconduct is rampant throughout the United States and particular so in places like Kansas City, Missouri. Lawyers representing the federal government in courts in Jackson, Platte, and Cass County, Missouri have held onto their unscrupulous methods of trying a case. Fortunately for them the punishment for such devious actions changed with the times.

View from my hotel room in Monterey.

I took a stroll down Cannery Row in Monterey, California today, then sat for hours listening to the waves push into the shore. The beauty of the picturesque locals were not lost on me, but I admit I was thinking about Tombstone, Arizona, Dodge City, Kansas, the Reno Gang, the Dalton brothers, my brother, Kid Curry, and Wyatt Earp. I’ll be writing about all those locations and people over next few years. While doing research on the Earp book I came across a conversation Wyatt reportedly had with a wagon master he met while on his vendetta ride. The exchange between the two men was included in the movie Tombstone, but it appeared in a scene with Wyatt and Doc. The real life conversation went like this: After the wagon master found out that Earp’s brothers had been gunned down he told Wyatt, “Ain’t got law, ain’t got nothing’. Only thing between us and the animals. Always the way it goes, though. Only way to down an Illinois man is from behind. The dogs don’t dare face ‘em. Mr. Lincoln, Wild Bill, now your brothers. Illinois men all and all downed from behind by dirty dogs and democrats. Guess an ordinary man’d be out for vengeance but I don’t figure that’ll answer here. It’s a reckoning you’re after.” “If the Lord is my friend,” Wyatt responded. “Let not your heart be faint, let your arm be steel—that’s all you need of the Lord,” the wagon master encouraged him. Nothing stands in the way now from the book about my brother being released. Once the literary attorney approves the text, a date for the release will be set. In the meantime I’ll be posting one or two items from the book on the site each week. As I do that I’ll also be holding on to the wagon master’s words to Wyatt before he got rid of the men that hurt his brothers. Let not your heart be faint, let your arm be steel. That’s all you need of the Lord.