What are the chances of being murdered on America's Mountain?

Not out of the question to face foul play at above 14,000 feet

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Pikes Peak can be a dangerous place. Today, you can wreck your car on the highway. Many have.  You can have a heart attack climbing, or perish because of altitude sickness, or have any number of bad things happen up there on  one of the more accessible 14ers in nation. But what are the chances of being murdered on America's Mountain?
Turns out, it is not out of the question.
From early records, as reported in New York Times, August 9, 1860, on Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Life at Pikes Peak:  TWO MURDERS IN THREE DAYS, A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. 
"The Rocky Mountain News, of the 25th, gives full details of several murders lately committed at Pikes Peak. One of the guilty parties was JAMES A. GORDON, who became engaged in a quarrel with the barkeeper of a saloon where he had been indulging freely in liquor, and finally shot him, inflicting a dangerous wound. This outrage he followed up, on the next day but one, the 16th, of July, by shooting and instantly killing one GANTZ, another barkeeper in the same town. Then GORDON thought it was time to put himself beyond the reach of the law. No one started in pursuit until the next morning after the murder had been committed, and then all efforts to arrest the scoundrel proved unavailing," the paper reported, according to the other paper.
But there is more:

"On Sunday, the 20th, a bar-tender. BILL BATES by name, shot and instantly killed Mr. M.F. HADLEY, an auctioneer. It was claimed that this affair was accidental, and the Vigilance Committee to which the case was submitted so decided, censuring BATES at the same time, for his careless use of deadly weapons," The Rocky Mountain News related and the Times relayed to readers.

Some of the proceedings of this Committee, the organization, of which was provoked by the outrages committed by GORDON, are thus sketched by the News:

"The trial of SAMUEL K. DUNN, for mule stealing, took place. A jury of twelve men was impaneled. Several witnesses were examined, whose testimony established the fact that three stolen mules were found in possession of three men, of whom DUNN was one. DUNN made a statement to the jury, admitting that, though he did not steal the mules himself, he knew that they were stolen, and was riding one of them back to the States, being anxious to get home again, and having no other way to go. The jury, of course, found him guilty, and he was sentenced, to receive twenty-five lashes at 7 o'clock last evening, and to leave the country within twenty-four hours. In reply to the question, where would the prisoner be whipped some said on the back, and others said he would be whipped on the bottom -- meaning of course the Platte bottom. Accordingly, at the appointed hour, the sentence, to the extent of nineteen lashes, was duly executed in the presence of a large crowd of spectators assembled to witness the agony and debasement of a victim quicker than they could have been drawn together by the inauguration of a President or the coronation of a Prince. At the nineteenth stroke the poor fellow fell and the flagellation ceased. His wounds, as well as himself, were dressed, and he is probably now far on his way hence, realizing the fact that "the way of the transgressor is hard."That was with early arrivals of "so-called" civilized settlers from the east, early in Colorado's written history.
A few years later, it had not improved much.
"On the morning of August 19, 1897, two men, George Reed, of Buttes, Colorado, and H.A. Barclay of Denver, walking down from the summit of Pikes Peak on the Cog Railway, noticed the legs of a man sticking from the culvert about three-fourths of a mile from the summit," reported local papers at the time.
"Investigation show great spots of blood scattered over the track, and a revolver with one chamber discharged, about ten feet away," noted Carl F. Mathews, who was superintendent of the Colorado Springs Police Department's Bureau of Identification, writing many years later about the incident for a paper the Denver Westerners.
"The men hastened down to the Saddle House where they notified the foreman of the section gang, and continued on. Before they arrived at Manitou, the management had been notified by telephone, but the men again stopped and notified Manager Sells, who in turn telephoned Sheriff Boyington. Coroner Marlow was in Cripple Creek, but his assistant was notified and went to the Peak on the afternoon train, arriving back in Colorado Springs with body about 6 o'clock," reported Mathews.
"Upon examination, a bullet hole was found in the head, the shot having been fired at close range as the hair was burned. The victim was about 25 years of age, nearly six feet tall, slender build and about 175 pounds in weight; fairly well-dressed. No papers in any pocket, but on the inside coat pocket, a tag with the makers name and also, 'E.M. Kirton, Wisner, Nebr. April 16, 1897.'"
The body was eventually identified as Herbert H. Kay, of Wisner, Nebr.
From more investigation, it was determined that Kay had nearly $200 on his person when he started up the Peak on the night of August 18, and had been staying at room on Ruxton Avenue in Manitou, and had asked his land lady to prepare a lunch for himself and two friends that he had met, and planned to watch the sunrise at the summit. She prepared a lunch of eight sandwiches and a pie, and Kay departed.
"A possible clue was given by Dr. Fraker and a Mr. Meyers. Dr. Fraker had employed a 19-year-old youth as an office boy, who gave the name of J.B Edmunds. The doctor was abscent from the office Monday, Edmunds took advantage of his absence to take a good portion of the doctor's wardrobe and to to decamp. Early Thursday morning, the 19th, Mr. Meyers had met two men coming down the Cog Road, one of them answering the description of Edmunds, and both had blood on their coats," Mathews report said.
On August 26, Edmunds was arrested in Kansas City. On his arrest he became very angry and before being told why he was wanted, said "I was in Larned, Kansas, on August 19th."
He was convinced to return to Colorado Springs.
A strange turn was taken in the case.
"Two young ladies who said they had seen the stranger in Kay's company the night previous to the murder were taken to the county jail and viewed Edmunds in the clothing worn on his last day in Colorado Springs; and then saw him in ordinary attire. The girls talked to him about 15 minutes, but told the sheriff that they could not identify him. According to the papers, "they were of more than ordinary intelligence."
Edmunds was release shortly afterward, on Sept. 10.
But according to Kansas papers, a year later,  the jury in the case of one Shirley D. Chamberlin (with a possible alias of Edmunds?) was charged with the murder of Herbert H. Kay, of Wisner, Neb., on Pike's Peak, in August last, brought in a verdict of murder in the first degree. "The case is the most sensational one in the history of El Paso county, and has attracted widespread interest, owing to the place where the deed was committed," noted several Kansas publications, at the time.
Following the rule of threes, and the reportage of these three separate murders, it does seem possible that one does realize — at least at some level, a measure of risk — when one considers the possibility of being murdered on Pike Peak.
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Teller County forgery, cattle theft, possible murder, overshadowed by war

Divide rancher's body was never found

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The threat of being drawn into to World War II was hanging heavy over the United States when Divide rancher Sumner Alfred Osborn went missing in October of 1941.
The first indication that something was terribly wrong surfaced when Sumner Osborn's mother, Mrs. A.H. Osborn, 215 South 11th Street, called Sheriff Sam Deal's office. Undersheriff  Roy Glasier investigated and was told by Mrs. Osborn that on the night of Oct. 16,  a man she did not know, came to her house and requested  S.A. Osborn's mail, saying that he had been instructed by Osborn to pick it up. There was no mail that day, so he returned the next, and she gave him a letter: She told Glasier that the letter had not been sealed properly and she looked in it, seeing a check made out to Sumner Osborn for $55.62, according to a 1962 account related by Carl F. Mathews. Mathews worked on unsolved crimes as superintendent of the Bureau of Identification in the Colorado Springs Police Department for years before he retired in 1952.
"The man told her that he and Osborn had sold a load of posts to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and the check was in payment, Glaiser investigated further and found the check had been made out for the sale of four horses to the zoo: the check was traces and endorsement was found to have been forged by one of the trio (George Marion Betts, John Cahill and Lester Cahill, brothers, all of Divide) and cashed at the Broadmoor Garage on Oct. 17," Mathews related in his paper about unsolved crimes.
Sheriff Deal was immediately in touch with Sheriff Cecil Markley at Cripple Creek and a trip was made to Osborn's ranch. The last time that Sumner Osborn was seen was Oct. 16, when he walked to neighbor's ranch and asked if someone could take him to the highway as he wanted to go to Colorado Springs to report that four horses had been stolen. Unable to get ride, he continued on foot.
"Betts in his confession admitted he went to Mrs. Osborn's home and obtained the check after Lester Cahill brought him from Divide. He said Johnny Cahill endorsed the check but that he and Lester stayed in the auto while Johnny went into into the garage to get the money."
The Cahills also, according to the confession, drove the herd of 14 Osborn cattle to the the Cahill ranch, loaded in a truck, and took them to the stockyards in Denver and sold them for $599.99.
"Betts declared the check was made out to 'Earl Osborn' and the two Cahills went to a Denver bank and cashed it. He asked the Cahills where Osborn was and they said they didn't know."
A heavy snow covered the region and made a search for Osborn difficult. By Nov. 2, Sheriff Markey had made the determination that foul play had occurred. A $100 reward was offered.
By Nov. 4, Lester Cahill indicated that he wanted to plead guilty to the cattle rustling, and authorities had been questioning both the Cahills, but they insisted that did know what had happened to Osborn. Lester admitted selling the cattle, but John denied any involvement.
By Nov. 6, Sheriff Deal, acting on a hunch, surveyed an abandoned mine pit called the Little Annie. the 300-foot shaft had the reputation of being a 'bad hole' and full of water at the bottom and plagued by deadly gas fumes in the bottom. They tried to lower a miner down into the shaft in a bucket but abandoned that effort when more bad weather arrived. a second attempt later, using more equipment, including a portable winch. George Gotham went down to 110-foot level, but declared the effort useless with such a short cable.
The next day, another experienced miner, Andy Kuhlman, was lowered to 250 feet, but said he found no gas, no water, and no body.
"He reported he descended to a point where the old timbers had fallen from the top and closed the lower part. The next day, Frank Mayes, deputy game warden, his nephew Fred, Willis White, nephew of Osborn, and Andy Kuhlman explored and ice cave east of Midland some 60 feet deep, known to but a few residents. And also and old mining tunnel, 600 feet deep, but without results. They reported the area was full of abandoned workings, many of which had not been touched for years," wrote Mathews in his unsolved crimes paper.
By Nov. 15, the Cahill brothers were willing to plead guilty to the horse and cattle theft but when questioned repeatedly on the whereabouts of Osborn "they had nothing to say." By the end of the month, they were charged, as was Betts, who was only involved in the horse theft.
"On Dec. 5, Harry Sollo, a real estate agent and self-styled 'student of psychic phenomena' said had received a 'message' which 'told him within a half-mile of where Osborn's body was lying.' He said he would leave an envelop, sealed and not to be opened until Monday, giving the location so the accuracy of the message could be proved after the search," according to Mathew's account.
That following Sunday, a procession of about 70 cars that included Sollo and four sisters of Osborn, was taken to a spot five miles east of the Cahill ranch, but the 'student of psychic phenomena' claimed they were taken to the wrong spot. And while they were, the body was being removed.
According to a message left at the Gazette and Telegraph office later, "the body was in a well five miles east of the Cahill place; Sollo also claimed that he had received information giving the actual location, and that Osborn had been shot with a revolver and beaten to death."
From that time on, after the dry psychic hole, the Osborn case was overshadowed by news of the war, and in effect, moved to the back burners of local investigation.
At their cattle rustling trial in February, the state Brand Inspector Earl Brown, testified that one of men selling the cattle, filled out paperwork that the car they were driving belonged to Alf Coulsen, a former Teller County Commissioner, and that the driver was "Earl Osborn," a brother of Sumner Osborn, who had been been dead for a year or more at the times the crimes were committed. The case went to jury, and the Cahills were sentenced to terms of eight and 10 years. Betts, only involved in the horse theft, received probation. The Cahills served their terms at the Colorado State Penitentiary, and were later released.
Sumner Alfred Osborn's body was never found.

Victim of unsolved murder last seen at Red Cloud

No real clues to the killer of Parsons have been found

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

"A blue-white gibbous moon hung above Ute Pass on Jan. 18, 1949, and Walter (Joe) Parsons, an 18-year-old waif who did painting and other chores for his board and room at the picturesque Red Cloud Inn in Cascade, had plenty of light to see by 9:30 p.m. when he left his employers house to walk 50 paces to his cabin," wrote Bernard Kelly, in the Denver Post's Rocky Mountain Empire Magazine, Sunday, May 1, 1949.
"Ivan Waugh, proprietor of the inn, and his wife, Florence, heard the crunch of his feet on gravel, gradually fading. Although they didn't know it then, that sound in the crisp winter air was the last they'd hear from the youth they had befriended.
The Waughs had been good to the boy. He usually ate his meals with them. that night they had whole corn for supper. It was good, and Parsons had eaten well.
Next morning Waugh went to wake the boy when he didn't appear for work. He found the cabin door open and the heater going. But Parsons wasn't there. and his bed looked as if it hadn't been slept in.
Not alarmed, because Parsons often left the resort for a day or so without leaving word, they wondered where he had gone.
"He had gone into eternity. Two days later, on Jan. 20, a Colorado Springs couple, driving toward the city from Garden of the Gods, saw a chalk white on a hill slope before them.. They stopped the car. The woman screamed...," by Kelly's account.
This is how Carl F. Mathews described it in a paper he wrote for the Denver Westerners in March, 1962, about unsolved murders in the Pikes Peak region. Mathews was superintendent of the Bureau of Identification in the Colorado Springs Police Department for more than 32 years.
"Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Boyer were driving on Garden of Gods Road when Mrs. Boyer looked up the embankment toward the top of the mesa. and saw what appeared to be a body of a person or animal; they then reported the find to the Police Department, but before officers could reach the spot, members of the road crew working nearby, and curious motorists had ruined whatever clues might have been picked up," wrote Mathews.
Chief Bruce stated in the Gazette, Feb. 4, 1949, "In the first place, after Parsons body was found, a great host of people descended on the spot, obliterating tire marks with the tires of their own vehicles and mussed up whatever marks were adjacent to the body."
Coroner Henry Maly and police and sheriff's officers came to the scene. There was a body, nude except for a pair of white socks. It was Parsons and he had been strangled to death.
His clothes were neatly tied in a bundle and thrown out beside him. They showed no violent usage. the strangulation weapon was not found. It was believed to be a rope.
"His clothing, part of which had been just laundered and never worn since, had been stuffed into the trousers he had been wearing and thrown next to the body, according to Mathews in his paper. "He had been wearing blue Levis, a white undershirt, tan, army-type shirt and red plaid jacket. (Strangely, his shorts were missing,)" by Mathews' account.
From Henry Maly's Coroner preliminary examination of the body, he said there were two possible causes of death: a blow on the head and strangulation.
"Around the youth's neck was a narrow crease and the impression of a rope. He had been struck on the left side of the head with a heavy instrument. An autopsy could not be performed until late in the afternoon, the body being frozen," reported Mathews. The temperature Tuesday ranged from 13 to 19 degrees above zero; on Wednesday night, 6 to 8 degrees above. "Dr. Maly said he had been dead somewhere between 24 and 48 hours., and thought he had been dead  when tossed or carried to the spot. Deep scratches were found on his back, evidently caused by his 15-foot slide down the embankment. Maly also said the scratches had not bled, indicating that he had been dead when dumped.
The strange discovery touched off one of the greatest manhunts in El Paso County in recent years. Police Chief I.B. (Dad) Bruce and Sheriff Norman Short both joined the search and were assisted by Special Agent Michael J Grant of the Santa Fe Railway, a noted and successful sleuth. Dozens of persons were questioned, according to Kelly's story in Empire.
Mathews says a Green Mountain Falls man, Ralph Elder, was questioned as a suspect by police officers and sheriff's deputies; police said a bloodstained lariat was found in his car. He was released after two days, having satisfied officers as to his whereabouts previous to the tragedy. The Waughs actually ran the Red Cloud Inn, in Cascade, according to Mathew's account.
After a more extensive autopsy performed at Blunt's mortuary on Friday, Jan. 22,  provided the following findings: 1. Parsons died from strangulation. 2. He was strangled by a rope, marks of which were found on his neck. 3. He was unconscious when strangled 4. The blow on the left of his head was  caused by a heavy instrument but not sufficient to cause death. 5. The blow on the head did not cause a fracture.  6. The brain was not damaged and there was no hemorrhage. It was also shown that his last meal was composed mostly of corn. From that rate of digestion of the corn, it was determined that Parsons must have died before midnight.
"The blood on Ralph Elder's lariat was proved by laboratory tests to be that of an animal and he was cleared from complicity. Elder admitted he had served eight years in San Quentin on two morals charges," reported Mathews.
Feb. 6, a waitress from the West Side of Colorado Springs, claimed she had talked to the killer and "Almost drove her employers crazy by her running around and talking it over with everyone. So they called the police and she was brought in; when questioned she stated that a man calling himself 'Bill Osgood' had asked her to drink with him, and that, over their beers, he had said he was the murderer. After talking with her, Chief Bruce stated he was confident she was lying but until something definite came up, she would remain in jail. Two day later, she admitted to Chief Bruce and special Agent Mike Gran, that her story was a lie, claiming she was tired of working and she wanted publicity," wrote Mathews.
Rewards for information about the case from various businesses and groups totaled more than $600, but failed to turn up much.
According to Mathew's paper, "Rumors that Parsons had been involved in sex affairs caused the arrest of a number of perverts of one kind or another and charges of sex offenses were lodged against some of them. No real clues to the killer of Parsons have ever been found."

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Mystery of murdered miner never solved

“Old men’s prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age is no longer a burden to them.” __ Euripides (438 B.C.)

Why would someone shoot a blind, feeble, retired miner, more than eighty-years-old, in the head as he lay in bed

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Clement S. Parks lived alone in an old two-story house on South Second Street in Cripple Creek in the winter of 1944. The building had 10 rooms but he kept to only three of them. He had arrived in the mining district in the heyday of 1896 and worked at the Portland for 32 years, but in 1928, his failing vision forced him to retire. His vision continued to falter quickly.
By 1944, as he had aged, he became increasingly more feeble and his sight had slipped so far that he could barely tell daylight from dark. In his eighties, the retired miner came to depend on the kindness and generous nature of his neighbors.
At least twice a week, his neighbor W. R. Thumback, an elderly man himself, would saunter by to help Parks in obtaining food and essentials, and with whatever the blind old man needed.
On the morning of Dec. 28, 1944, when Thumback came calling, his friend’s outside door was unlocked when he entered at 7 a.m. Parks, the harmless, old, blind miner that was not known to have an enemy, was found dead in his bed, shot once through the head.
Thumback had notified Mrs. A. W. Oliver, in charge of the Teller County welfare office, who in turn called A.C. Denman, corner, who went to house immediately and found Park’s body still warm, according to a paper written for the Denver Westerners by Carl F. Mathews in 1962. Mathews was the former superintendent of the Bureau of Identification for Colorado Springs Police Department.
“Sheriff Cecil Markley and Police Chief Steve Playford said they had a murder mystery in which they found no clues. At the end of a day’s work on the case they had no idea who fired the shot,” wrote Mathews.
“Markley said an extensive search failed to reveal the presence of a gun, thus putting the question of suicide out of the question. In the hip pocket of Park’s trousers, which hung at the head of the bed, the officers found a wallet containing $445. The bullet, a .38 caliber, had passed through the man’s head and the officers found it embedded in the wall. The shot had evidently been fired from the direction of the outside door. Parks was not believed to have had any money other than that in his pocket, the officers said, nor anything else of value… They said it would not have been necessary for anyone to kill him to rob him.”
According to reports, both officers said that while Thumback had been questioned at length, no suspicion fell on him. The Sheriff and the Police Chief made a thorough search of the entire building but nothing in fingerprints, tracks other indications had been found that would throw any light on the mystery. Markley said he could find no grounds for supposing that treasure of any kind was hidden in the old building.
A.C. Denman, coroner held an inquest at Law Mortuary in Cripple Creek on Dec. 29 and reached the conclusion that Parks had come to his death by gunshot wound to the head, inflicted by a person or persons unknown, and that his death was felonious.
On Sunday, January 8,1945, Sheriff Markley said “everything is at a standstill,” in efforts to solve the case. According to all subsequent reports, nothing more was ever learned. To this day, there is no clear picture who, or why, someone would choose to shoot a blind, feeble, retired miner, more than eighty-years-old, in the head as he lay in his own bed.
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Texas Seven out the front window

One Monday morning more than seven years ago, we watched out the front window of the Ute Pass Courier newspaper office in Woodland Park, Colo., as multiple emergency vehicles began filling up the newspaper parking lot.
“No information at this time,” is what they emergency staff told us when we tried to find out what was going on.
After nearly 20 minutes of being completely in the dark of what kind of operation was taking place in our own neighborhood, we discovered that police, including local city and county officers, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, FBI and federal marshals, arrested members of the Texas Seven in the Coachlight mobile home park directly to the east of us.
The seven inmates made their break from a maximum-security prison near San Antonio, Texas, six weeks prior to the excitement near our office. Before showing up in our town, police say the fugitives killed an Irving, Texas, police officer, shooting him 11 times and then running over him as they looted a sporting goods store for clothing, weapons, ammunition and more than $70,000 in cash.
On August 14, 2008, Michael Anthony Rodriguez became the first of the gang to be executed for his part in the killing of Irving Officer Aubrey Hawkins on Christmas Eve in 2000. The rest of the surviving Seven’s cases are in various stages of appeal in the Texas courts.
Rodriguez, claiming a religious conversion on death row, asked for years that his appeals be dropped so that he could face his punishment and stand a better chance at going to heaven.
Three of the escapees were surrounded in Woodland Park by a police SWAT team at a convenience store a few miles down the road as they left the Coachlight RV Park to get their morning coffee. At the same time that was happening, police surrounded the RV in the park with two other fugitives inside. By using a bullhorn, police were able to get one of the two in the RV to surrender. The holdout, Ron Harper, took his own life by shooting himself twice in the chest. He used two different weapons, according to information released later by the county coroner. Two of the men remained at large for two more days and were finally captured in a Colorado Springs hotel room about 15 miles from here.
By the time we knew what was happening, the calls from Texas television stations, CNN and other national media were already coming in. At times, three people from our newspaper would be on a phone with TV stations or other news organizations. With only four voice lines, it made it tough to get our own business taken care of. The TV stations would call and then pass us back and forth between affiliates, live talk shows, and various news programs. By late afternoon, however, area phone lines became too busy to call us or anyone else in Woodland Park.
From Monday night until early Wednesday morning, TV trucks with satellite dishes on top and shivering reporters out front, stretched from the bottom of our parking lot, down a half mile of Highway 24. We loaned phone lines, fax machines, desk space, and offered directions, travel advice and restaurant recommendations for reporters and photographers working for outfits including Reuters, The New York Times, America’s Most Wanted, Time, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune and others.
The media circus gradually split up and migrated to several nearby locations including the Teller County Jail, the Teller County Courthouse in Cripple Creek, and down the hill to Colorado Springs where the last two were captured.
Reporter stragglers for various national publications and TV shows were still wandering into our office a month later.
In the midst of the excitement that Tuesday morning, reporters and photographers from The Denver Post, working a story about the little newspaper office near the big story, had a good laugh about our light tables.
Their amusement with our antique equipment, the instant info and live feeds, along with the exposure to national media’s top-of-the-line technology made us realize how fast the news business is evolving, even in the weekly newspaper world.
Granted, our papers were probably about seven years behind where we should be in terms of technology, but how things have changed, even for a one- or two-horse operation like ours. Seven years ago, a small weekly probably wouldn’t be moving photos and pages around on the Internet. No PDF workflows. No affordable digital cameras. No cell phones that worked in our mountains. No laptops connected to the cell phones to file stories with. Not even much of a World Wide Web.
This story broke on a Monday, which from a deadline standpoint was not bad for us as a weekly newspaper. We print our main product, the Ute Pass Courier, Tuesday afternoon and are on the street by Wednesday morning. Our initial coverage was very similar to that of the local dailies and national reporters.
On that first day, everybody was being fed much of the same info as fast as the police could pull it together. Tuesday, a few minutes before we were leaving for the printer, we received word that the police had found what they thought to be the remaining two fugitives’ van, and were conducting a room-by-room search of nearby hotel rooms in Colorado Springs. With this information, we ran with a small update box on the front of our paper near the main write-through.
As fast-moving as this story was, however, by the time we hit the street with our edition Wednesday, the remaining two fugitives were in custody, having been talked out of a Holiday Inn room with the promise of five minutes of airtime each on a local TV station.
Wednesday morning, after speaking with our news staff and realizing how frustrated they were at not being able to keep up with the story with our regular weekly schedule, we bumped the press time for another of our weekly news products and made arrangements for a special edition that would hit Thursday night. We printed enough of the special editions to insert in all three of our weekly nameplates, each having different drop dates beginning with Friday and carrying through the following week. We also printed an additional 2,500 to distribute free as soon as they were back from the 100-mile round-trip to the printer Thursday afternoon. All 2,500 were distributed to countertops at local high-traffic areas in our market by Friday night.
Competing with local dailies, national newspapers, magazines, television and news services that had larger crews dispatched on this story than we have staff in the whole building, we tried to put a good package together with "first-light" information that still had a shelf life into the next week. The special edition stretched our resources to see-through levels, but when it was put to bed, we felt pretty good about both our first-day information and the special section.
One of our reporters, Pat Hill, put together two excellent color pieces on the role local emergency services played in the raid. She then left immediately for an emergency appendectomy before the editors had a chance to read her stories.
Other reporters on our staff were offered as much as $250 per quote to shag quotes for national media outlets.
Even after a few months, locals were still talking about it, of course, and comparing their own Texas Seven stories. A few area businesses with little or no shame are trying to capitalize on the national attention, by doing things like offering "Texas Seven pizzas" or trying to auction off a pool table on Ebay that the infamous group reportedly played on. I’ve even heard members of the local chamber of commerce half-jokingly suggest changing the chamber motto from "City Above the Clouds" to "Escape to Woodland Park."
But most people here in Woodland Park are just happy that none of the locals were hurt, the bad guys were caught, and law enforcement was able to perform so efficiently.
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Big Bill Haywood

Six-foot-three-inch, gruff, imposing and sometimes-volatile figure with a thunderous voice, and a milky dead eye that he never replaced with a glass one.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The story of “Big Bill” Haywood draws like a magnet and twists and twirls like a deadly snake. It winds and loops its murderous way into the fabric of labor history.
The son of a former Pony Express rider, Haywood was born in Salt Lake City in 1869. His dad died when he was three and after he punctured his right eye in accident involving a pocket knife and a slingshot, he was forced by family economics to go to work in the mines before he was ten years old.
As an adult, the six-foot-three-inch, gruff, imposing and sometimes-volatile figure with a thunderous voice, and a milky dead eye that he never replaced with a glass one, became one of the most feared radicals in the American labor movement.
In 1902, Haywood and Charles Moyer assumed leadership of the Western Federation of Miners. In his own words from a speech in 1911 in New York City, Haywood noted the importance of the Cripple Creek strike.
“Then came the general strike in Cripple Creek, the strike that has become a household word in labor circles throughout the world. In Cripple Creek 5,000 men were on strike in sympathy with 45 men belonging to the Millmen's Union in Colorado City; 45 men who had been discharged simply because they were trying to improve their standard of living. By using the state troops and the influence of the Federal government they were able to man the mills in Colorado City with scab millmen; and after months of hardship, after 1,600 of our men had been arrested and placed in the Victor Armory in one single room that they called the "bullpen," after 400 of them had been loaded aboard special trains guarded by soldiers, shipped away from their homes, dumped out on the prairies down in New Mexico and Kansas; after the women who had taken up the work of distributing strike relief had been placed under arrest--we find then that they were able to man the mines with scabs, the mills running with scabs, the railroads conveying the ore from Cripple Creek to Colorado City run by union men--the connecting link of a proposition that was scabby at both ends! We were not thoroughly organized. There has been no time when there has been a general strike in this country.”
Haywood would wind up the striking miners with thunderous shouts of “Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep — eight hours a day.”
"So when the miners in the Cripple Creek and Telluride districts went out on strike in August 1903, led by WFM president Charles Moyer and head organizer “Big Bill” Haywood, the mine owners were ready with a fast and vicious response. As soon as the general strike began in August, General Bell himself led 1,000 guardsmen to Cripple Creek, and sent another 1,000 (all of them funded by the Colorado Mine Owners’ Association) to Telluride," according to George Sibley, who teaches at Western State College in Gunnison.
"They practiced a kind of 'preemptive justice,' declaring martial law in both those potentially volatile areas before anything actually happened, suspending all constitutional guarantees and setting up barb-wire bullpens in public places where anyone who looked at a guardsman cross-eyed was immediately incarcerated," Sibley wrote in Colorado Central Magazine in 2003.
"When a lawyer came with a writ of habeas corpus to free some of his miner clients, Bell shouted, “Habeas corpus, hell! We’ll give them post mortems!” When someone mentioned the Constitution, he said: “To hell with the Constitution!” We’re not following the Constitution!”
Haywood often had to travel in secret through the mining camps and he is widely blamed for inciting much of Colorado violence that culminated in the 1904 bombing of the railroad platform at Independence in which thirteen died.
Then, according to Faces of Protest web site, “Shortly after Christmas in 1905, former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg was returning to his home in Caldwell after a day in his nearby office. As he opened his garden gate a bomb exploded, shattering the forty-four-year-old Steunenberg’s body. He died within hours.”
“Local police quickly arrested a suspicious figure staying at the Caldwell hotel. He eventually was identified as Harry Orchard. Under grueling questioning by law enforcement and Pinkerton private detectives, Orchard confessed to being an assassin hired by the Western Federation of Miners.”
Orchard claimed the hit had been ordered by Charles Moyer, “Big Bill” Haywood and former board member George Pettibone.
The Pinkerton men secretly arrested the three in no-knock raids in Denver in 1906 and “extradited” them to Idaho. (It was reported at the time, Haywood was found sleeping with his sister-in-law.)
Billed as “the trial of the century,” Haywood was able to secure Clarence Darrow as his defense attorney, and pay for it with small donations from union members around the country. During the trial, Orchard also confessed to killing two men with a bomb in the Vindicator Mine, as well as many other murders for hire and sport.
Despite that testimony and amid suggestions that the trial was rigged, Haywood was acquitted. Darrow depicted Haywood as victim of mine-owners conspiring against him in order to silence him.
Leaving the Western Federation of Miners in 1908 to work with a more aggressive union, he channeled his efforts into Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the “Wobblies.” By 1915 he had become the leader of the IWW and managed strikes in New Jersey and Washington State.
From the head of “Wobblies,” Haywood was said to advocate sabotage or “direct action” against employers refusing to recognize union organization efforts.
“Wobblies were explicit about their eventual goal of toppling capitalism, and many of their leaders, including Haywood, expressed open admiration for the young Soviet Union,” according to PBS documentary “The West.”
Haywood, in addition to his reputation as a solid socialist, was also known for his atheism. Christianity, he said, “was all nonsense, based on that profane compilation of fables called the Bible.”
Arrested during World War I and convicted of violating the federal espionage and sedition act by calling a strike during wartime, Haywood served a year in Leavenworth. While out on bail pending an appeal of that conviction, he fled the country and went to Moscow. There, he became a “trusted advisor” of the Bolshevik government. He was often used as spokesman for worker advancements claimed by Vladimir Lenin and other Marxist but some historians claim he soon became disenchanted with corruption and abuses of power.
Haywood died in 1928 and his ashes were divided and half were buried in a wall of honor at the Kremlin. Half were returned to the United States and buried at monument to American workers in Chicago.
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