NO NEED FOR KRYPTONITE

6/16/1959 - A la the unsolved mysteries of who killed director William Desmond Taylor in 1922, what happened to movie producer Thomas H. Ince aboard William Randolph Heart's yacht, "Oneida," in 1924 what caused the death of comedian Thelma Todd in 1935, and who was the monster that slaughtered the ingenue known as "The Black Dahlia" (actress Elizabeth Short) in 1947, a new real-life mystery comes to Hollywood, California as the summer of 1959 begins.  Plunging an entire generation of young American boys into months of traumatizing depression, 45-year-old actor George Keefer Brewer, better known to the world as thespian George Reeves, the man starring on TV as Superman/Clark Kent, leaves a small gathering of friends partying downstairs at his Benedict Canyon home in Los Angeles, California, enters his upstairs bedroom, and minutes later is dead from a .30-caliber Luger pistol bullet to the head.

Reeves

Reeves is born Brewer in Woodstock, Iowa on January 5, 1914 to Donald Carl Brewer (the propritier of a small town drug store) and Helen Lescher.  When his parents separate, he lives with his mother and her family first in Galesburg, Illinois, and then,  in Pasadena, California.  He leaves the Brewer name behind when his mother remarries Frank Joseph Bessolo (a second generation Italian-American whose family owns a vineyard in northern California) and in 1927, her new partner adopts George as his own son (the marriage lasts 15 years before Helen goes hunting some new happy in 1940 and tells her son his step-father is gone not because he left the relationship, but because he committed suicide).  Standing 6'2" tall and weighing 195 pounds, a Golden Gloves fighter with a 31-0 record by the time he is 20 (when his nose is broken for the ninth time he decides to hang up his gloves), Reeves begins acting in high school, and takes his passion for the arts forward when he attends Pasadena Junior College (he is also a member of the acapella choir and plays guitar).  Reeves is "discovered" by the Hollywood talent scouts of producer David O. Selznick while studying his craft as a member of the nearby prestigious Pasadena Playhouse (he also meets his first wife there, Ellanora Needles, the granddaughter of circus mogul, John Franklin Robinson ... the marriage will last ten years) for four years, beginning in 1935 when he is 21-years-old.  Paydirt struck at the very start, his first role on camera is as one of the red-haired Tarleton twins, Stuart, that is trying to score a date with Scarlett O'Hara at the beginning of the Best Picture of 1939, Margaret Mitchell's Oscar winning "Gone With the Wind."  Returning to the Pasadena Playhouse after the filming of his part is completed, Reeves wins the lead role in the Playhouse's production of "Pancho," a part which in turn leads to the actor being signed to a contract with Warner Brothers Studio.  At Warner's he appears in a handful of major releases for the studio (there are three James Cagney movies, "Torrid Zone," "The Fighting 69th," and The Strawberry Blonde") but mostly is seen in two-reel short subjects and B-picture films (two of which also feature the future President of the United States, Ronald Reagan).  Believing the actor does not have "star" potential or that he is being cast properly, by mutual agreement Reeves is let out of his Warners' contract, and soon signs on with Twentieth Century-Fox, but has little luck there either.  Inspired by his role as the wounded love interest of nurse Claudette Colbert in Paramount Pictures' "So Proudly We Hail!," Reeves puts his acting career on hold and joins the U.S. Army in 1943, where he is assigned to Special Theatrical Unit U.S. Army Air Corps and spends World War II acting in the service's Broadway show, "Winged Victory" (followed by appearing in the show's national tour and then replaying his role in the movie version) and making training shorts (in one, he is directed by John Ford and teaches the evils of getting syphilis in "Sex Hygiene").

Wooing Scarlett

Returning to Hollywood in 1946, Reeves is frustrated by the movie offers he receives, and is even more discouraged at the films that finally make it on to celluloid (like playing a bush pilot that goes mad in "Jungle Goddess," or trying to kill Johnny Weissmuller's Jungle Jim as the crazed photographer, Bruce Edwards, in the first of the sixteen Jim movies).  During this period of time, during production of the serial, "The Adventures of Sir Galahad" (with Reeves as the legendary Arthurian knight) to make ends meet, Reeves also holds down a job digging cesspools.  Luck finally his, in 1951 the starring role Reeves takes in the B-movie, "Superman and the Mole Men," morphs into the recurring roles of Clark Kent and Superman on the TV show (13 episodes filmed in 13 weeks), "The Adventures of Superman."  An "instant" celebrity by 1952, Reeves will star for six seasons in all 104 episodes of the show making over $5,000 a week during production (roughly $48,000 a week in 2020 money).  And because of the part, he will get a second chance at handling A-list roles in major Hollywood productions like Fritz Lang's "Rancho Notorious" as the outlaw Wilson opposite Marlene Dietrich and Arthur Kennedy, or as Sergeant Maylon Stark in Fred Zinnemann's Oscar winner of 1953, "From Here to Eternity" (the type-casting though becomes cement when audiences yell, "There's Superman!" when Reeves appears on screen as a member of Burt Lancaster's Army boxing team).

As The Outlaw Wilson

Opposite Burt Lancaster In "From Here to Eternity"

Finally a star, Reeves quickly discovers that his fame comes at a price, its cost being he must continue to be Superman, both on camera and off ... a task he has grown exceptionally weary of enduring at 45-years-of-age.   Thinking his talents are being wasted, he puts together an adventure TV series to be shot in Hawaii called Port of Entry, but financial backing can't be found, and invisible money men is also the problem when Reeves tries to put into production a low-budget science fiction movie (with himself as director) written by a friend from his Pasadena Playhouse days.  Turned down for roles, told no when pitching projects, desperate for work, in 1959 Reeves painfully agrees to bring back Superman for another season of twenty-six episodes, start up his Superman national tour again in July (and there are plans to take the show to Australia), and star in a feature movie release entitled. "Superman and the Secret Planet" (and there are plans for a exhibition boxing match to be shown on national TV between Reeves and light-heavyweight world champion, Archie Moore).  And while these "struggles" are plaguing his artistic career, Reeves also begins having troubles in his personal life.  Divorced from his first wife, actress Elladora Needles, in 1941, as the decade of the 40s comes to an end, Reeves finds himself the boy-toy in a 10-year relationship with Toni Lanier Mannix (his junior by over eight years), a former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl with a legendary sexual appetite that is married to MGM Studios trouble-shooter executive, Eddie "The Bulldog" Mannix (the couple have an open marriage and Toni and George often are accompanied on dates by Eddie and his latest Hollywood mistress).  Lover pampering by way of a fancy car, a lush bank account, a gold watch gift (inscribed with the words, "Mad About The Boy"), silken clothing, romantic vacations, posh furniture, and a home in the tony Benedict Canyon region of Los Angeles (some of the region's residents have included Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Rock Hudson, and Buster Keaton), in 1958, Reeves finally tires of the diamond encrusted leash Mannix has around his neck (planning on marrying Reeves when her ailing husband dies, she is irate when she gets the news that she has been dumped for a younger woman and threatens to out the actor to the world as a homosexual and communist), and the actor begins seeing a 38-year-old New York party girl named Leonore Lemmon, a spoiled Vanderbilt family beauty known for her drinking and temper (the pair plan to marry on June 19th and honeymoon in Tijuana, but the nuptials never take place).

Needles

Reeves, Mannix And Friend

Lemmon

Setting the stage for the death that is to come, in the days and months leading up to June, Reeves begins getting death threats, when he answers the phone sometimes there is only sinister breathing coming out of his receiver, his dog is kidnapped and murdered, Toni Mannix continues her habit of calling Reeves up to 20 times a day pleading for the pair to get back together, a young boy at a publicity appearance asks if can shoot Reeves with the real gun he has brought to the festivities, a mysterious black truck tries to push Reeves off the road one evening, his vehicle is in a major accident on the freeway with two trucks, and the actor almost kills himself running into a tree when his brakes fail for lack of having any stopping fluid in the vehicle's system.   On Monday, June 15, 1959, Reeves and Lemmon leave Reeves' abode and have dinner and take in the matches of a local wrestling promotion.  Heavily drinking throughout the day, the couple manage to have several loud arguments which people notice.  Returning to Benedict Canyon at around 11:00 in the evening, where they have left houseguest Robert Condon behind to work on his autobiography of boxing champion Archie Moore.  Using the upcoming nuptials of Reeves and Lemmon as an excuse for celebrating, there is more drinking by the trio before Reeves finally decides to go upstairs to his bedroom.  But instead of ending, the small downstairs party expands when Condon's girlfriend, Carol Von Ronkel, and neighbor William Bliss show up and start drinking with Condon and Lemmon.  Unable to sleep with all the racket being made downstairs, at around 12:30, Reeves accosts the partiers and yells at them for the late hour and noise, then returns to his room, but not before joining everyone for one more drink (at the autopsy, the actor will by found to have a .27 blood alcohol level and he is taking medication for all the hurts he has taken doing many of his own stunts).  Laughing at her lover's anger, Lemmon suddenly shouts, "He'll probably go up to his room and shoot himself.  Then, as the foursome hear a bedroom drawer opening through the thin floor, she then adds, "Oh, no!  He's getting his gun out now and he's going to shoot himself!" (the actor is notorious for playing with his guns and simulating games of Russian Roulette).  A second later, there is the loud bang of a pistol from upstairs, and when Bliss ascends the stairs to investigate the sound, he finds a naked Reeves, face up on his bed, his feet on the floor, comatose, bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to his right temple (about an inch above his ear), a luger pistol at his feet.  Hammered, it takes the four living occupants of the house 45 minutes to sober up enough to call the authorities ... or to get their stories straight.

Reeves Home

Seemingly a slam dunk case of suicide, the death soon becomes mysterious when the authorities start collecting and then examining evidence in the death of Reeves.  Besides the strangeness of Lemmon's comments moments before the gunshot sounds or the length of time it takes for the death to be reported, there is the German pistol (previously only used to fire blanks), which is totally devoid of fingerprints, there are bruises on Reeves body suggesting he had recently been in a fight, negating normal ballistics, the ejected death round casing is somehow under Reeves' body, the angle of the wound to Reeves' head doesn't coincide with the actor inflicting it on himself based on the location of the kill slug the police find in the ceiling, the corpse has no gunpowder residual on it, there is no suicide note, the police find two other fresh bullet holes in the upstairs bedroom that had come from the same gun, and someone enters into the home 24 hours after the killing, breaking the yellow crime scene tape at the front door and upstairs bedroom (protocol is also broken when the body is washed off, removing any potential clues, by the city coroner).  Quickly deemed a suicide (the investigation by authorities barely lasts a week), a host of the actor's friends (among them are the cast and crew of Superman, actors Alan Ladd, Gig Young, Rory Calhoun, Burt Lancaster, and Frank Sinatra, and family that includes Reeves' mother, who out of her own pocket, pays celebrity lawyer Jerry Giesler to do a second investigation) never believe Reeves killed himself (showing her true colors, when Lemmon discovers that most of the actor's assets, $71,000, have been willed to Toni Mannix, with the actor's mother also being remembered, she takes $4,000 in traveler's checks from the house supposedly meant for the couple's honeymoon, gets on a train is off to New York within 48 hours of Reeves' death, and is never seen in Los Angeles again ... this on top of rumors that she is upstairs when the shot is fired and tells the other three guests to say she was downstairs with them when the police arrive.).        

Death Certificate

Autopsy

Casket George

At his funeral in July, the Reverend R. Parker Jones of the St. Albans Episcopal Church officiates.  Among those attending the ceremony are Noel Neill (the actress portraying Lois Lane in the TV series), comedian Don DeFore, actor Alan Ladd, actor Gig Young, and professional wrestler and stunt man Gene LeBell.  Believing her son has been murdered and his body might be required to prosecute the killer, his mother (she will have a small shrine honoring George in her home for the rest of her life) holds Reeves' funeral service at the Wayside Chapel of the Gates Funeral Home in Los Angeles, has the body moved to the Woodlawn Mausoleum in Santa Monica, then has her son shipped back to Cincinnati for burial in the local family crypt, but when officials deny the request citing a lack of space, George is returned to California where he is finally cremated.  His mortal remains in the form of ashes in an urn now reside (beside those of his mother) at the Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California.  Witnesses and evidence now gone, or locked testimony locked in as is, George Reeves death officially remains listed as a suicide, but no can say for sure that is what happened and for those that don't believe in that finding, the death is considered a murder at the hands of an irate Lemmon, responding to Reeves calling off their marriage, the work of killers hired by an enraged Toni Mannix (there will be rumors that on her deathbed, Mannix will confess to arranging the killing), the death is the result of Eddie Mannix seeking revenge for his jilted wife (it is said that Mannix has the Luger blank replaced by a live round that he knows George will eventually shoot at himself pretending to play Russian Roulette) ... or perhaps Reeves was so upset at the way his life was going, in a moment of weakness he did take his life.  Myself, I think Lemmon did it (knowing she was banned from the Stork Club for getting in a fist fight certainly contributed to my choice), firing the two bullets as warning shots at Reeves before putting a round in his head when he refused a last time to have anything further to do with her, then shut up her friends with threats to kill them too if they told the Beverly Hills cops the truth ... but of course, who knows.

Dead George

Final Rest

Not faster than a speeding bullet, nor more powerful than a locomotive, or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound ... actor George Reeves dies a mysterious death worthy of an Edgar Allen Poe on this day in 1959.

Super & Lucy

 

   

    

   

SONTAG & EVANS

6/11/1893 - The subjects of the biggest manhunt in California history to the time (a host of dozens of lawmen and over 3000 armed citizens and bounty hunters will scour the San Joaquin Valley and surrounding mountains for almost a year ... so many so that eleven deputies are actually wounded by other deputies during the pursuit), acting on a secret tip, northeast of the town of Visalia, the train robbing team of Chris Evans and John Sontag is ambushed by a small posse of lawmen led by U.S. Marshal George E. Gard at what will be known as the Battle of Stone Corral.

Posse And Mortally Wounded Sontag

Born of a transplanted Irish father and a German mother on February 19, 1847, just outside of Ontario, Canada in the small village of Bells Corner, Roman Catholic Christopher "Chris" Evans spends 16 years with his family (along with his parents, there are seven other siblings in the Evans clan) before going off on his own to make his future in the United States.  Enlisting in the Union Army at Buffalo, New York under an assumed name.  Instead of battling Confederates, Evans finds himself fighting Sioux warriors in the Kandiyohi country of western Minnesota and leaves the war with the souvenir of three broken ribs from an Indian tomahawk (he kills his attacker and then scalps the corpse).  Afterwards, he stays in the army for a time as a well respected scout for the Seventh Calvary and General George Armstrong Custer, before deserting in 1873 (upset with how his commanding officer is being treated by powerful Washington politicians) and making his way into California.  Settling near the town of Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley, works as a teamster before marrying Mary Jane "Molly" Byrd (from a respected Virginia family that produces a United States senator and the rear admiral that becomes famous for his explorations of the North and South Poles ... she is fifteen and he is twenty-seven when they marry).  A respected member of the early settlers of the valley, before his snap takes place, the 5'8" Evans is happily married husband and father of five children (Eva, Ynez, Louis, Winifred, and Joe) that has a work resume that includes steamboat engineer of the Bessie Brady on Owens Lake, a miner of quick-silver and gold, a wheat harvester, a superintendent of three Bank of California wheat warehouses, railroad worker, construction foreman, and a land owner of twenty acres of beans south of Visalia (the property is now part of Sequoia National Park).  It all comes to an end after the Southern Pacific Railroad of Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker make a bean harvest worthless by changing freighting costs and a Evans' new livery stable business in Modesto burns to the ground (in the conflagration, twenty-two horses and a young man named Jacob Claypool die).

Parents - Thomas & Mary Ann Evans

Chris Evans

Records missing, John Sontag is born on May 27, 1861 in either Connecticut, Missouri, or Mankato, Minnesota as John Contant.  His father is an immigrant from Holland and his mother a transplant from Germany.  When his father dies young of tuberculosis and his mother remarries a German named John Sontag, he takes on that surname, while his brother George will move back and forth between the two monikers as his criminal career begins growing.  Not interested in being the priest his mother wants him to be, a wonderful horseman, John leaves home at sixteen and eventually finds his way to California, where as a muscled young adult standing six feet in height, he finds work as a brakeman for the Southern Pacific Railroad ... but not for long.  In 1887, an engineer for the railroad makes a mistake while Sontag is uncoupling a train and instead of two cars being separated, they come together and the brakeman has his right lung pierced by the projecting end of one of the iron rails the train is carrying.  Spitting up blood from the wound in his back, Sontag will spend two months in a railway hospital in Sacramento and will carry around a fist sized depression in his back for the rest of his life.  And for the rest of his life he will also hold close to his heart a raging hatred for the business that gets him hurt, then casts him aside when he can no longer serve as a brakeman.  Out of work, he meets Evans in Tulare in 1887 and the men bound over their hatred of the Southern Pacific (Evans is discussing the Mussel Slough Tragedy in which seven men are killed in 1880 when the Southern Pacific takes the disputed lands of a group of California settlers near the town of Hartford, California when the two men initially meet), their passion for the outdoors, and their love for Eva Evans.  Hired as a handy man about the Evans' farm, twenty-five-year-old Sontag and eleven-ear-old Eva fall in love with each other at first sight (with her father supervising the courtship, the pair are engaged when Eva is fourteen and plan to be married when she is seventeen).  Caught up in Evans' troubles when things turn bleak for the businessman as the 1880s close and the decade of thein 1890s begins, for both money and revenge, the pair decide to start plundering the rail lines of the Southern Pacific.

Molly Evans

The Robberies Begin

On February 22, 1889, the first robbery takes place outside the town of Pixley when two masked men force the engineer, Peter Boelenger, to stop the Southern Pacific #17 as it heads south for Los Angeles, enter the express car by way of a stick of dynamite, take loot valued at over $5,000 from the car, kill railroad employee Henry Gabert with a shotgun blast, severely wound Deputy Sheriff Ed Bentley in the face and hand (the lawman is a passenger on the train) when the lawman investigates the unexpected stop and explosion, and then mount two horses hidden at the site of the robbery and ride off into the night (to their deaths, both Evans and Sontag will deny having ever robbed any Southern Pacific trains).  The next robbery takes place on the evening of January 20, 1890 a short distance south of the town of Goshen.  Employing the same methods as the Pixley heist on the southbound #19, two men take $20,000 in gold out of the express car (the messenger decides he doesn't want to try dynamite and opens the car's door to the bandits) and then vanish, but not before killing a frightened tramp that tries to run away from the scene of the crime and is shot in the back.  Back in action on the night of February 6, 1891, outlaws attack another southbound train just outside the town of Alila.  On the Alila robbery however the bandits gallop off without any money after engaging express messenger C. C. Haswell in a brief gun battle that takes the life of the train's fireman.  The robbers get back into action on September 3, 1891.  Tactics the same as before, two men force the engineer, Andy Neff, to stop the southbound train out of San Francisco (the #19 again) after it let's off passengers at the Ceres depot ... and once more, the outlaws ride off with no loot despite blowing two dynamite holes into the express car (a third charge falls through a hole in the car's floor and explodes harmlessly outside), this time because of the two Wells Fargo agents inside that refuse to surrender (both men will be awarded gold watches from Wells Fargo as a reward) and the resistance of detective passenger Len Harris who fires a borrowed .32 Smith & Wesson revolver at the desperadoes (for his efforts, Harris will be wounded in the neck but survive).  The last California robbery takes place on August 3, 1892 and is much more successful for the badmen, who ride away from a robbery of the #17 near the line's Collis station (named in honor of Collis Huntington) with a reported $50,000 in bags weighing almost 200 pounds (an escape buggy and third man are used in the robbery, and the only man injured is expressman George D. Roberts who has his shoes blown off, dislocates a shoulder, and suffers a concussion when the outlaws enter the express car by way of hurled dynamite).

John Sontag

During this period, there are also trips back east by both men that coincide with two men (believed to be John Sontag and his brother George, recently released from the Nebraska State Penitentiary at Omaha where he'd been serving time for robbery), robbing the #3 train out of Chicago at Western Union Junction of $9,800 in assets on the night of November 5, 1891.  And on July 1, 1892, there is an evening robbery of the #1 out of Omaha at the railroad's Kasota Junction depot (this time the bandits are believed to be Chis Evans and George Contant) that fails to net the gang any money because express car access gained, one of the robbers can't locate any money inside the car (thought to be George Contant).  Thought at first to be the work of the Dalton Brothers (while Grat, Bob, and Emmett are visiting their brother Bill's ranch), the focus of law enforcement eventually sights in on known enemies of the railways of California, John Sontag and Chris Evans, especially after a drunken George Contant will discuss the men's crimes while talking to various bartenders and patrons of Visalia's saloons.  Seeking to question John Sontag about the tales his brother has been telling while intoxicated, on August 5, 1892, railroad detective Will Smith and Deputy Sheriff George Witty show up at the ranch of Chris Evans.

George Contant/Sontag

Confronting Eva Evans and then Chris Evans in their home, Smith loses his temper and begins yelling that Evans is a liar for saying John Sontag is not in the house, and the confrontation escalates when John Sontag suddenly appears in the living room holding a shotgun as a panicked Witty snaps off a shot that just misses Eva's head.  Flight instinct kicking in, Smith runs outside where he is shot in the rear end by Sontag, while Evans shoots Witty in the shoulder.  Lawmen down (and soon removed to local hospitals), Evans and Sontag take the sheriff's buggy and vanish, but return that night for supplies and to say goodbye to family, not knowing a new band of manhunters is hiding out around the barn, awaiting the return of the outlaws.  When the men do arrive, gunfire takes place again which kills the two horses pulling the outlaw's stolen wagon and sends posseman Oscar Beaver to the morgue with a bullet in his brain.  Suspects to killer outlaws in a matter of seconds, Evans and Sontag flee into the nearby mountains and instigate a manhunt in California that will last for almost a year (with Wells Fargo and the Southern Pacific Railroad jointly offering $10,000 for the arrest of the pair, or $5,000 for each individual that is arrested and brought to trial).  Because mail had been tampered with in the train robberies, the crimes are now also considered a federal matter and United States Deputy Marshal Vernon Coke "Vic" Wilson, out of Arizona with two Apache trackers, are brought into the search for the renegades (relishing the task, Wilson will brag about how Evans and Sontag will soon become the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth notches on his gun).

Wanted Poster

Wilson

Escaping an initial posse of fifty men by pointing a Winchester rifle at the stomach of the group's leader, Sam Ellis, the bandit pair eventually take up residence in cave hidden by a waterfall.  Playing a daily and nightly game of hide-and-seek with the authorities, Evans and Sontag mostly move around only at night, getting supplies from friends and family, and news from the residents of Visalia.  Gambling with their lives and the lives of those chasing them and those supporting them, the outlaws are eventually discovered by a posse of thirteen men (led by Wilson and his two Apache scouts, Pelon and Cameno Dulce) at a place called Sampson's Flats where Evans maintained a gold claim.  On September 13, 1892, making it appear that a casual breakfast of scrambled eggs and fried ham and potatoes is being innocently served to a group of miners at a nearby cabin, the outlaws lull the hungry posse into approaching the cabin, and then, when they are within ten feet of the structure, open fire on the lawmen.  Deadly lead flying about, U.S. Deputy Marshal Wilson is mortally wounded in the stomach by double load of buckshot from Chris Evans' shotgun, U.S. Deputy Marshal Andrew W. McGennis is killed by gunfire from both outlaws, railroad detective Alfred Witty is wounded by Evans, the horse of U.S. Deputy Marshal Warren Hill is killed, John Sontag is hit in the right arm, and Evans is concussed by a bullet that clips his skull and tears off the edge of the outlaw's eyebrow.  Posse put to flight, the two bandits walk over twelve miles through rough hill country to the Downing Ranch, where they receive food and ten days of nursing for Sontag before the pair vanishes into the mountains again.

Battle Of Sampson's Flat

McGennis

Battle Of Sampson's Flat

Aware that good publicity allowed the James-Younger Gang to operate for years i Missouri, during their flight from the law, the outlaw duo allow themselves to be interviewed by writers Ambrose Bierce, Henry D. Bigelow, and Charles Michelson of William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, cementing the duo's legend of being "social" bandits that the Southern Pacific has forced into a life of crime.  They also put together a foolish plan to help George Contant (convicted by his own mouth of the Collis robbery) escape from Folsom Prison using smuggled in weapons that results in the death of convict named Williams, the death of a convict named Dalton, three convicts being wounded, and Contant, the center of the plot, getting shot through his leg and shoulder before being returned to his cell to face even more years behind bars.  Trying to set up an ambush of the men, lawman J.S. Black is shot in the thigh near Sequoia Lake.  Inevitably betrayed by someone they trust (Evans' brother-in-law, Perry Byrd provides the tip where the outlaws can be found), the outlaw's have their Waterloo against the authorities on June 11, 1893 outside a vacant house twelve miles northeast of Visalia.

Evans Revolver

Tip provided as to where Evans and Sontag can soon be found, a small posse of nine men, led by U.S. Marshal George E. Gard and U.S. Deputy Marshal Hi Rapelje converge on a location known as the Stone Corral outside of Visalia.  About twenty minutes before Sunday's sunset, peeking out the back door of the vacant house, Rapelje spots the posse's prey walking down a nearby hill towards the house he is hiding in (Evans wants to fire a couple of shots into the home to stir up anyone hiding inside, but Sontag talks him out of it for fear of accidently hitting an innocent occupant).  Stepping out the front door and then circling around to either side, John Sontag starts the party by firing his Winchester at Rapelje, who along with Fresno Deputy Sheriff Fred Jackson opens fire on the outlaw and knocks him off his feet as Evans and the rest of the lawmen begin firing at each other too.  Resting on a pile of hay before going into the vacant house, Evans has a groove cut into his back by a bullet, then takes hits from a shotgun blast that wound the bandit in the head (pellets pressed against the membrane surrounding the brain, Evans will suffer from one continuous headache for the rest of his life!) and gouge out his right eyeball.  Down but not out, Evans puts a slug in the leg of Jackson when the lawman tries to position himself for a better shot at Evans (the lawman will have the leg amputated below the knee the next day.  Taking up positions behind the hay, Sontag is hit in the chest and knocked out of the battle, while Evans keeps firing until the dark of night arrives, suffering more bullet strikes that turn Evans left arm to tatters below his elbow and and also make a mess of the outlaw's right arm, from the wrist to the elbow.  Then, accuracy hindered by his wounds, Evans puts three bullets into a light wagon the posse has driven up to the location from the town of Kingsburg, thirty-five miles away.  In the initial part of the battle, 40 shots have been fired.  Through the evening, over 140 more rounds are sent the bandit's way, with the posse taking return fire at the flashes of its firing.  Quietly, sometime in the wee hours before it becomes light, after Evans relates to his friend and partner that he is done, Evans says goodbye to Sontag and crawls away in the darkness.

Layout Of The Engagement

Firing On The Outlaws

Site Of The Battle

At daybreak, the posse slowly creeps forward and discovers Sontag lying among the hay and manure of the stone corral.  He is scooped up, placed in a wagon, and taken to a Visalia jail cell, where he dies from his gunshot wounds and the Tetanus they create in his body at the age of thirty-two on July 3rd.  His partner, Evans, is soon in the hands of the authorities too.  Bleeding profusely, able to see out of only one eye, Evans, banging into trees he can't see, rolling over a mountainside of manzanita bushes, walks over seven miles of mountain trails to reach the Perkins farmhouse in the Elderwood district of Wilcox Canyon (the daughter of Mrs. Perkins is married to the brother of Evans' wife).  Destination reached, Evans has his wounds treated as best they can, then sends Elijah Perkins into Visalia to arrange his surrender with the acting sheriff, William Hall.  When three different osses show up at the Perkins Ranch, a gun battle almost breaks out over which set of authorities will take possession of Evans (and receive the bounty of rewards offered for his capture.  Both shot up outlaws are placed in the Visalia jail, where Evans has his left arm amputated.(and seeing her crippled father and mortally wounded fiance, Eva Evans has a fit of hysteria which lasts roughly thirty-six hours ... recovered, Eva and her mother, Molly, will star as themselves in a quickly written melodrama about the outlaws that provides the money needed to hire legal representation for Evans in the form off attorney S. J. Hinds and state senator G. G. Goucher).  Brought to trial in Fresno on November 20, 1893 for murder, it takes nine days to secure a jury from over three hundred individuals interviewed.  Jury seated, the prosecution and defense begin a joust for justice lasting fifteen days that includes lawmen testifying to what a dastardly character Evans was, what a wonderful person he was from his daughter Eva, traitorous confessions from John Sontag's brother George, and Evans finally taking the stand in his own defense (in which ever wrong he admits to was first brought on by the Southern Pacific).  Found guilty of murder after the jury deliberates for almost seventeen hours, the panel, instead of sentencing the outlaw to death, decides jail for the rest of his life is a better sentence.

Evans At Trial

Of course it is also a sentence that allows Evans to put into effect a plan to escape prison that includes getting most of the men guarding him sent out of town over a friend faked crime (he is helped immensely in setting up his escape by his daughter, Eva).  On the evening of December 28, 1893, while his wife is visiting as dinner is served, Evans gains possession of a loaded revolver hidden by a napkin.  Hostages taken, Evans and a young prisoner named Edward Morrell make their way outside and down the street looking for horses or a rig to leave Fresno as soon as possible.  Discovered by town constable John D. Morgan, Evans shoots the lawman in the shoulder when he fails to follow Evans' orders.  Hiding in the mountains once more, the men hit the train station at Fowler, California on January 11, 1894 ... risking their freedom for a measly $60 they pilfer from a local resident and an insurance salesman, a robbery that also results in the wounding of railroad section foreman, Pat Lahey, in the arm, civilian H. A. Mulligan being hit in the shoulder by a bullet, and town constable Charles Ochs taking a round in his hip.  Hiding at a site Evans has named Camp Manzanita (used by Sontag and Evans during their sojourn in the California mountains, the hideaway is hidden behind thick manzanita bushes, a huge smooth  rock forms the back side of a cabin), the men are discovered by a local posse, but manage to escape when a blizzard hits the area (and another wounded lawman is added to the criminal esume of Evans), Evans, sans his artificial arm.  But not for long ... wearied mentally and physically by the rough winter weather, the pair sneak into Visalia to spend secret time with Evans' family (he has been tricked into returning home by stories his son is gravely ill), but the secret gets out.  Surrounded, with two caretakers and six Evans children also in the house, the outlaw duo decides to surrender instead of engaging in another bloody gun battle.  On February 19, 1894, Evans is back to being a shackled prisoner of the authorities (placed on trial for the escape and latest criminal antics while on the run, Evans receives yet another life sentence).  Evans will serve his time walking back and forth in his cell, help run the prison library, work in the Folsom hospital where he will become known as "the Good Samaritan," write a book called "Eurasia," and visit with Collis P. Huntington of the Southern Pacific.  On May 1, 1911, with a new governor in office that is an enemy of the Southern Pacific Railroad (Republican Hiram Johnson), and at the behest of his daughter Winifred's petition, after seventeen years behind bars, Evans becomes a free man once more ... free if he stays out of California.  Banished to Oregon as part of the terms of his parole (with the exception of court approved visits), Evans lives out his life in Portland, Oregon (where a major portion of his family has transplanted to), surrounded by friends and family, puttering about his garden, taking care of a group of cats he loves, and proclaiming his innocence over the many crimes he is accused of committing).  He dies in Portland on February 9, 1917 and goes to his rest at the Mount Calvary Cemetery at the age of 69 (his wife will live out the rest of her life in Laguna Beach, California, where she passes away in 1944).

Folsom Convict

Old Man & Cat

Evans Tombstone

  And he goes to his rest, content in knowing many of his enemies have already received the karma they deserved.  Railroad detective Will Smith dies of a cancer that eats his face away, ratting out family, snitch Perry Byrd suffers domestic troubles for the rest of his marriage, U.S. Deputy Marshal J.S. Black is murdered in Arizona, George Witty is confronted by embezzlement charges and commits suicide, Luke Hall, in charge of the bloodhounds that pursue the outlaws through the mountains, falls out of his wagon and is killed instantly when it's horses run over him, family traitor George Contant/Sontag spends fifteen years behind bars and then dies of a social disease upon his release from prison, and posse member Al Perkins is crushed by a loose boulder while seeking the mountain retreat of Evans and his confederates.  Mostly forgotten now, the murderous outlaw duo of Sontag and Evans is broken up by hot lead on this day and evening in 1893.

Memorial

    

                 

   

   

THE DEMISE OF BILL DALTON

6/8/1894 - The sixth member of the ill-fated Dalton clan (there will twelve siblings that survive childhood, three more that won't) of ex-Kentuckian fiddling gambler Lewis Dalton and Adeline Lee Younger Dalton (an aunt of the Younger brothers that will one day ride with Frank and Jesse James), Mason Frakes Dalton (also known as William Marion Dalton or simply Bill Dalton), becomes the fourth and last member of the family to die of gun violence (lawman Frank Dalton is killed by whiskey runners outside of Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1887, Grat and Bob Dalton die in Coffeyville, Kansas in 1892 trying to rob two banks at the same time) when he attempts to flee a posse lead by U.S. Marshal S. T. Lindsey near Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Bill Dalton

Born in Cass County, Missouri in 1863 as the American Civil War is being bloodily played out across the country, Bill grows up near Coffeyville, Kansas learning a wide variety of farm skills, how to handle an assortment of weapons while hunting racoons and possums with his brothers, and horsemanship.  Intelligent, he also develops a talent for talking himself into and out of trouble, always seems to be carrying a pack of playing cards, and dreams of bettering himself by going west and striking it rich in the gold fields of California.  At first a success story for the family, in 1884, at the age of twenty, Bill follows his brothers Charles, Henry, and Littleton out to California, making his roundabout way west gambling, working as a miner in Butte, Montana, taking construction laborer jobs when they are available, hiring on as a roving hand come harvest time, and mule skinning with his brothers on Turner Island in the San Joaquin Valley of California.  Working on the ranch of Cyrus Bliven, Bill falls in love with the man's daughter, and marries Jane "Jennie" Bliven on June 15, 1885 (the pair will have two children, Charles "Chubb" Coleman Dalton and Grace "Gracie" May Dalton).  A marriage that opens doors for Bill, Dalton goes into business with his brother-in-law, Clark Bliven, and in 1887, buys property on the Estrella River, thirteen miles southeast of the town of San Miguel in California's San Luis Obispo County.  There he builds a farm which will feature a beautiful white two-story home surrounded by palm trees.  Successful at business and farming, he is soon a well respected member of the community and begins dabbling in state politics, becoming the chairman for the Democratic central committee in Merced and political committeeman for the town of Estrada, while positioning himself for a run at a seat in the state legislature in Sacramento with rants against the Southern Pacific Railroad, and its president, United States Senator Leland Stanford.  Bright future possible, everything comes apart when Grat and Bob Dalton, along with sidekick Bill McElhanie (who is thought to be Emmett Dalton) come calling in 1890 after robbing a Mexican gambling house near Silver City, New Mexico.

Bill Dalton

Already being watched as potential threats to the Southern Pacific, known to be former lawmen that have lost their badges, the threesome visiting Bill Dalton (Grat has set up shop gambling in Fresno at a den of inequity called the Grand Central Hotel), along with Bill himself are soon pegged as the robbers that attempt to raid the Southern Pacific's Atlantic Express on its regular run from San Francisco to Los Angeles on February 6, 1891 that leaves Fireman George W. Radliff gut shot dead (the robbers flee without any cash).  Indicted for the robbery by a grand jury in Tulare County, Bob Dalton and McElhanie respond by cutting their vacation short and returning to Oklahoma (where McElhanie decides the outlaw life is not for him), while Bill and Grat Dalton are both arrested and put on trial for the crime.  Separate trumped up trials follow with Grat being found guilty of the train robbery (though witnesses will testify to his presence at the gaming tables of Fresno on the day of the robbery) and Bill Dalton being acquitted ... acquitted but found guilty in the minds of the public for having bad men for brothers with his political career going up in smoke as Bob and Emmett begin robbing trains back in Kansas and Oklahoma (revenge in their minds for the authorities taking their badges and accusing them of being crooks) and Grat manages to escape jail and leave the state.

Bill Dalton's California Home

Enraged that he is now suspected of every new train robbery that takes place in California, And he becomes even more angry when, after months of plundering the region, word reaches Bill in October of 1892 that two of his brothers have been killed trying to rob two Coffeyville banks (Grat and Bob) and a third sibling is captured and not expected to live (though Emmett does).  Leaving his family behind, something snaps in Bill when he visits Coffeyville and sees how its citizens have treated his brother's corpses and taken possession of personal items, along with seeing how shot up Emmett is (the only reason he wasn't lynched after the failed robbery is because everyone in town, including his doctor, believe Emmett won't survive his wounds.  Ruined in California, now ruined in Oklahoma and Kansas by his brothers' antics, Bill decides to become an outlaw himself and is soon riding with outlaw Bill Doolin (who escapes being killed at Coffeyville himself when his horse fortuitously goes lame as the bandit is riding into town with the rest of the Dalton Gang) as second-in-command of a group of desperadoes that will come to be known as The Wild Bunch, The Oklahombres, the Oklahoma Long Riders, or simply, the Doolin-Dalton Gang  (members varying with different jobs, the core outlaws of the group are Bill Doolin, Bill Dalton, George "Bittercreek" Newcomb, Charley Pierce, Oliver "'Ol" Yantis, William "Tulsa Jack" Blake, Dan "Dynamite Dick" Clifton, Roy "Arkansas Tom Jones" Daugherty, George "Red Buck" Waightman, Richard "Little Dick" West, and William F. "Little Bill" Raidler (expecting to lead the group, Dalton receives only one vote in favor of him commanding the outlaws ... his own).

After Coffeyville - Bill Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton

& Dick Broadwell

Wounded Emmett

Doolin

Five feet and eight and a half inches tall with dark hair, a moustache, and blue eyes, as a member of the Oklahombres, Bill Dalton participates with Doolin, Yantis, and Newcomb in robbing the Missouri Pacific Railroad near the small town of Caney, Kansas (10/14/1892 ... with Dalton uncoupling the express car from the rest of the train, being one of the outlaws that wounds the express messenger in the arm with a Winchester round, and then plunders the car), rides with Dolin, Arkansas Tom, Newcomb, and Tulsa Jack when the group hits the westbound California Express near the town of Cimarron (June 19, 1893 ... with Doolin, Bill covers the locomotive's engineer and fireman, supplies some of the bullets that wound the express car's messenger in the left side, helps Doolin plunder the car, and assists the gang with his rifle in their escape from a posse led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Chris Madsen in which Doolin is shot in the foot),   And of course, Dalton is one of the men that engages in a shootout with a posse of fourteen U.S. marshals and deputy marshals in the town of Ingalls on September 1, 1893.

Wanted Poster

Playing poker all night with Bill Doolin, Tulsa Jack, Dynamite Dick and Red Buck Weightman (not feeling well, Arkansas Tom checks into the town's O.K. Hotel, while Bittercreek stands guard, watching the friendly game from a spot near the bar, the lazy morning of the Bill Dalton comes to abruptly violent end when a bored Bittercreek decides to make an early morning visit to a lady friend's home, and is fired upon and wounded outside Ransom's Saloon by U.S. Deputy Marshal Dick Speed.  Grabbing his rifle, in the melee that follows, Dalton engages the lawmen with his Winchester, puts down covering fire for Doolin, Tulsa Jack, and Dynamite Dick as those men run to their mounts stabled next to the saloon, holds off the marshals again as Doolin and Dynamite Dick make a mad dash out of the back of the barn, has his horse shot out from under him leaving the barn by its front entrance 

(a favorite mount of Dalton's, his Cleveland Bay is hit in the jaw and leg), returns to the downed horse for a pair of wire cutters when the gang finds themselves trapped from escape by a wire fence (putting his horse out of its miseries at the same time), shoots already wounded 49-year-old U.S. Deputy Marshal Lafeyette "Lafe" Shadley when the lawman exposes himself at the home of George Ransom, runs back to the fence and cuts a hole in the obstruction, mounts up behind Doolin, and rides out of town (pausing only to send another salvo of bullets at anyone attempting to stop their flight, action that wounds 14-year-old bystander Frank Briggs in the shoulder).  Dalton unscathed in the gun battle that claims three lawmen's lives, causes two civilian deaths, and sees three other individuals wounded (firing from the hotel, Arkansas Tom will surrender when U.S. Deputy Marshal James "Jim" Masterson threatens to blow up the building with two sticks of dynamite) will hide out with friends and family around Kingfisher, Oklahoma before adding to his criminal resume again in March of 1894.

The Ransom Saloon & Livery

Ingalls Getaway

Shadley

Obtaining information on money a U.S. Army paymaster is moving, on March 13, 1894, Doolin and Bill Dalton pay a visit to the railroad hotel of Woodward, Oklahoma, where they kidnap station agent George W. Rourke from his room, walk him downstairs and over to the train depot, have the man open the station's safe, and take the $6,540 inside meant for the soldiers of nearby Fort Supply.  Then, on April 1, 1894, Dalton and Bittercreek invade the Catholic Mission settlement of Sacred Heart (on the edge of the Seminole Nation portion of the Indian Territory).  Attempting to rob the settlement's general store, Dalton is recognized by the store's owner, former lawman T. H. Carr ... in the gunplay that follows, the former marshal, Bittercreek, and a teenager with a shotgun named Lee Hardwick are all wounded and the outlaw duo is forced to flee on horseback without any booty.  Most of the gang back in action again, on the afternoon of May 10, 1894, Doolin, Bittercreek, Pierce, Dick West, Raidler, Dynamite Dick, and Dalton hit the Southwest City Bank of Southwest City, Missouri (located in the southwest corner of Missouri, with the Arkansas state line and the Indian Territory that will become the Oklahoma state line forming the city's western limits).  Part of the crew that goes into the bank, Doolin, Bittercreek, and Dalton rob the establishment of over $7,000 in assets, but emerge on to the town's Main Street and find themselves in another gun battle in which over a hundred bullets will fly up and down Southwest City ... fleeing town Little Dick West wounds Oscar Seaborn and kills his bother, J.C. Seaborn as the two men stand on a sidewalk as the outlaws pass by, Doolin is wounded in the head by a shotgun blast of buckshot that also wounds his favorite horse, Old Dick, two other bandit mounts are wounded, a civilian, M. V. Hembre, is hit in the foot will imbibing at the town's Baker Saloon and loses the appendage, and U.S. Deputy Marshal Simpson Melton is wounded in the leg.  It will be Dalton's last criminal endeavor with Bill Doolin.  Remembering his brothers demise and drunkenly arguing with Doolin over the raid, Dalton decides it is time he left the Oklahombres and started a gang of his own (tired over constantly arguing with Dalton over targets and plans for the gang, Doolin is happy to see Bill go).

Bill Dalton

 Not the quality of gunmen and riders that compose the Oklahombres, Dalton's new gang consists of a womanizing cowboy named George Bennett, a miscreant from the Ardmore area around the Texas-Oklahoma border named Jim Wallace, and a sawmill worker named Bill Jones.  Deciding that there are too many lawmen in Kansas and Oklahoma, the gang's first and only job takes place in Texas, at the town of Longview on May 23, 1894, just a short ride from the Lone Star State's border with Louisiana.  An over 200 bullet battle between outlaws and citizens and a debacle of the first order, the gang's raid on the town's First National Bank results in Bennett being shot and killed by Deputy City Marshal Will Stevens, City Marshal Muckelroy is shot in the bowels and dies, outlaw Bill Jones kills Longview citizen George Buckingham, and saloonkeeper J. W. McQueen and bystander citizen Charles S. Leonard are both hit by wild shots, with Leonard dying two days later. ... all for a measly take of $2,000 in ten and twenty dollar bills.  Fleeing for their lives west towards the town of Paris then into the Indian Territory, the men hide in a canebrake from a posse chasing them, divvy up the Longview proceeds, then ride of in different directions.  Dalton makes his way to the Ardmore area where his wife and family, not knowing the man of the family is a bandit (or so they will claim later), are staying on the farm of Houston Wallace, the brother of Longview outlaw Jim Wallace.  Seeking a scent of it's lost prey, in the town of Duncan lawmen discover a new wagon has been bought in town using currency stolen during the Longview job, find the new buckboard is being used to convey victuals, ammunition, and nine quarts of illegal whiskey, and learn that the man driving the wagon is the brother of the outlaw killed in Longview.  Luck run dry just as it had for his dead brothers Frank, Grat, and Bob, U.S. Deputy Marshal Seldon T. Lindsay, located in nearby Ardmore, decides to put a nine-man posse together and search the Wallace farm.

Inside The Longview Bank Afterwards

Lindsay

Surrounding the Wallace home on the morning of June 8, 1894, the lawmen discover Dalton playing with his daughter Grace in the front yard.  Surrender demanded, Dalton instead bolts into the house, grabs a pistol, and jumps out of a window in the back of the structure.  Trying to escape into a tiny nearby ravine, Dalton turns to fire on U.S. Deputy Marshal Caleb Lawson "Loss" Hart, but is a heartbeat slow.  The killer of nine men during his eleven year career as a frontier lawman, with a snap shot from his .44 Winchester rifle, Hart drops Dalton with a single fatal slug that rips through the outlaw's chest, just above his heart (at almost the same time, Dalton is also hit in the chest by a Winchester round fired by Lindsay, there will also be rumors that the actual killer of the legendary desperado is the nephew of lawman Pat Garrett, U.S. Deputy Marshal Buck Garrett).  Body released to Bill's widow, Dalton is embalmed, put on a train in Ardmore, and returned to California.  On 6/22/1894, before thousands of people, Mason Frakes "Bill" Dalton is buried at the left front corner of the Bliven home in Livingston, California, then years later, after the property is sold, dug up in the middle of the night and moved to a spot in the Turlock cemetery.  At both locations, to this day there are rumors that Dalton's ghost still walks about, searching for enemies. 

Hart

The Rifle That Does In Dalton

Dalton Death Mask

The News

6/8/1894 ... the last of the active outlaw Dalton brothers dies with his boots on a farm outside of Ardmore Oklahoma, roughly 90 miles from both Oklahoma City and Dallas/Fort Worth, moving from life to legend in only thirty short years.

Dead Bill

Dead Bill