THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF JOHNNY RINGO
On July 14, 1882, a teamster named John Yost discovered the body of a man Dragoon Mountains of Arizona, not far from Tombstone. The man was seated – with a single bullet hole in his head – against the trunk of a large tree. He was in a clearing that contained a large, flat rock that was surrounded by a ring of five blackjack oaks. It would have made a comfortable spot to sit and have a meal, but this man had apparently taken his own life – or had he?
It would later be discovered that the dead man was a gunfighter, Johnny Ringo, who had been mixed up in the violence that had so recently occurred in Tombstone. He’d allied himself with Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton, and Frank Stilwell, had been in a confrontation with Doc Holliday, and was suspected by Wyatt Earp of having taken part in the attempted murder of his brother, Virgil Earp, and the ambush and death of Morgan Earp. But who had killed him? Or had he killed himself? The answer to those questions remains a matter of debate today.
What most of us know about Johnny Ringo comes from Michael Biehn’s sinister portrayal of him in the film, TOMBSTONE. He is presented as a man with a mysterious past, who speaks multiple languages, and is deadly with a gun. In real-life, well, we don’t know a lot more than that – Ringo remains a bit of enigma in western history.
We do know that Ringo was born in Green Fork, Indiana, in 1850 and his family moved to Liberty, Missouri six years later. In 1858, they moved to Gallatin, Missouri. On July 30, 1864, when Ringo was 14, his family was in Wyoming en route to California. His father, Martin, was killed when he stepped off their wagon holding a shotgun that accidentally discharged. The buckshot entered the right side of Martin’s face and blew off the top of his head. He was buried in an unmarked grave along the trail.
By the mid-1870s, Ringo had left California and moved to Mason County, Texas, where he befriended a former Texas Ranger named Scott Cooley, who was the adopted son of a local rancher named Tim Williamson.
Trouble started when two cattle rustlers, Elijah and Pete Backus, were dragged from the Mason jail and lynched by a predominantly German mob. Tensions escalated. On May 13, 1875, Tim Williamson was arrested by a hostile posse and murdered by a German farmer named Peter Bader. Scott Cooley, Ringo, and several friends began a violent terror campaign against the Germans. It became known as the “Mason County War.” The first attack was carried out by Cooley when he murdered a German ex-deputy sheriff named John Worley. He shot him, scalped him, and dumped his body in a well. Worley would not be the last man that Cooley killed during the war.
After a Colley ally named Moses Baird was killed, Johnny Ringo committed his first murder on September 25, 1875. He and a friend, Bill Williams, rode up in front of the house of James Cheyney, the man who led Baird into an ambush, and called out to him. Cheyney came out unarmed, invited them inside, and then began washing his face on the porch. Ringo and Williams both opened fire and killed him where he stood.
A short time later, Ringo killed again. He and Scott Cooley mistook a man Charley Bader for his brother, Pete, and shot him down. The two were arrested and jailed in Burnet, Texas, but didn’t stay there for long. They were quickly broken out of jail by friends and Cooley and Ringo parted company to evade the law.
At some point, though, he was arrested again. Legend has it that, during this time, he shared a cell with notorious killer, John Wesley Hardin. Whatever the charge, he was apparently released because two years later, he was serving as a constable in Loyal Valley, Texas. Soon after this, he traveled to Arizona for the first time.
Ringo first showed up in Cochise County, Arizona Territory history in December 1879. A drunk Ringo shot unarmed Louis Hancock in a saloon when Hancock refused a complimentary drink of whiskey, saying that he preferred beer. Hancock survived the shooting. In Tombstone, Ringo earned a reputation for being a crack shot and having a very bad temper. He began participating in killings and robberies with the “Cowboys,” a loosely associated group of outlaws.
On January 17, 1882, Ringo got into a verbal confrontation with Doc Holliday and when things began heating up toward a gunfight, they were arrested by Tombstone’s Police Chief James Flynn and charged with carrying weapons in town. Both were fined. Ringo was suspected by the Earps and Holliday of taking part in the December 28, 1881, ambush of Virgil Earp, which crippled him for life. Two months later, it’s believed that Ringo was one of the gunmen who killed Morgan Earp while he was shooting pool in a Tombstone saloon.
When the “Earp Vendetta Ride” began on March 20, Wyatt Earp killed one of Ringo’s friends, Frank Stilwell, and began hunting everyone they believed connected to Morgan’s murder. Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan received warrants from a Tucson judge for the arrest of the Earps – even though he was a Deputy U.S. Marshal by time – and Doc Holliday. He infamously deputized Johnny Ringo and 19 other men, most of whom were “Cowboys.” They pursued Wyatt and his friends but never caught up with them.
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