7/10/1889 - Aptly named Tombstone, one of the gunmen infamous for the known shootings he commits while in that wild Arizona mining town, Nashville Franklyn "Buckskin Frank" Leslie, in a fit of jealousy while drunk, kills his "wife," Mollie Edwards, with a bullet into the woman's brain, then turns his pistol on the man Edwards is talking to, a local pistolero named James "Six-Shooter Jim" Neal, hitting the man in the left breast and in the arm (Neal will survive the encounter).
Leslie
Born in San Antonio, Texas on March 18, 1842, the early part of Leslie's life is a mystery. The son of a father named Bernard from Virginia and a Kentucky woman named Martha. There is also a tale that he is born in Galveston to Thomas Kennedy and Martha Leslie, and begins using his mother's last name when he has a falling out with his father. Whatever the case might be, for the first 36 years of his life, there is no historical documentation for Leslie's activities, but there are lots of stories that the gunman is happy to pass along as an adult in his cups. Accordingly, Leslie goes to Heidelberg, Germany to study medicine (while his brother attends West Point), but leaves that career path behind after returning to the United States and fighting for the South from 1861 to 1865 as a First Lt. in Brigadier General Benjamin Gordon's 10th Cavalry (or as a bugler in the service of the state of Virginia, while his brother is fighting for the Union). After the war, Leslie's resume expands to include supposed stints a deputy sheriff for Abilene, working under the guidance of James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, as a "rough rider" in Australia, piloting a ship in the Fiji Islands, demonstrating rifle marksmanship around the world, and scouting for the United States Army in Texas, the Oklahoma Territory, and the Dakotas during the 1870s. Carrying a reputation as a man not to be trifled (there are rumors that he has shot and killed 14 men), what is known about the man when he emerges as a bartender at Thomas Bollard's saloon in San Francisco during an 1878 census (by the following year, he is tending bar Kerr & Jurado's Saloon and Billiard Room) is that Leslie stands 5'7" tall (he walks on two-inch high boot heels), weighs a slight 135 pounds, has pale, blue eyes, sports a large moustache, favors games of chance, wears two guns during his waking hours (and is an expert shot with either hand), has an evil temper that is quick to flare, especially when he is liquored up (and he gets liquored up a lot), and of course, that he has a predilection for wearing buckskin, hence his nickname.
Hickok
In July of 1880, Leslie arrives in Tombstone, Arizona attired in the buckskins of an Army scout, and looking like the General Custer portrayed in an Anhueser-Busch lithograph that hangs in almost every western saloon of the time, is immediately hired by a local establishment to tend bar. Exchanging his wilderness attire for the fine clothing of a San Francisco gentleman (all tied together with a fringed buckskin vest, Leslie soon partners with William H. Knapp in opening the Cosmopolitan Saloon on the city's busy Allen Street, next door to the Cosmopolitan Hotel that the Earp Family will make it's headquarters after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place on October 26, 1881. In the battles that play out for control of Tombstone and the region, he soon becomes an Earp partisan and good friend of the clan's leader, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (Wyatt will state for the record years later that Leslie's shooting skills and speed are on a par with those of the dentist pistolero from Georgia, John Henery "Doc" Holliday). He also quickly becomes involved with a woman that tickles his fancy named Mary Jane "May" Evans Killeen, a chambermaid at the Cosmopolitan Hotel ... though separated from her husband, a still very married chambermaid.
The Cosmopolitan Hotel
Mary Killeen
Becoming a menace to the peace of the town and the health of Tombstone's citizens, in the early 1880s Leslie rides in the posse led by the Earps that goes after the bullion robbers (a $26,000 in which stage driver Budd Philpot and passenger Peter Roerig are killed) that hit the Wells Fargo stagecoach leaving Contention, Arizona on the night of March 15, 1881, pistol whips a drunk that doesn't move out of his way fast enough while he is entering the Oriental Saloon, and is said to have killed gunman Johnny Ringo after the two have a disagreement while spending a drunken two weeks hunting together in the Turkey Creek Canyon region of Arizona (the killing remains a mystery to this day). On November 14, 1882, his marksmanship with a revolver sends another Tombstone resident, gun thug Billy Claiborne, to the town's Boot Hill cemetery. Bristling for months after being accused of running out on his Cowboy friends at the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (when the bullets begin flying, Claiborne flees out the back of the corral without firing a shot), to pump up his ego, Claiborne takes to calling himself Billy the Kid (the real kid, is killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico on July 14, 1881), and insists that everyone else in town use his new moniker too. Having made the acquaintance of the real kid before the youngster demise, Leslie of course refuses to participate in Claiborne's charade and tensions begin the two men build until a drunken Billy pushes Leslie too far (Cosmopolitan Saloon burnt down, Leslie is working as a bartender at the Oriental Saloon at the time). Demanding that he be called "Kid," cursing the staff of the Oriental Saloon (he is asked nicely to stop his foul comments more than once), and accusing Leslie of being Johnny Ringo's killer, Leslie finally tires of Claiborne's posturing, and grabbing him around the collar, throws the drunken lout out into the muddy street. Ire raised to retribution required heights, but no fool knowing Leslie is a better shot, Claiborne procures a rifle and waits outside the saloon to ambush his enemy when he leaves the bar. No fool and warned by two men that there is a man with a rifle hiding in a fruit stand near the entrance to the Oriental, Leslie quietly exits the saloon from a side door and surprises his waiting opponent. Stepping from the darkness, Leslie tells Claiborne, "Don't shoot. I don't want you to kill me, and I don't want to have to shoot you." Claiborne however responds by snapping off a shot in Leslie's direction, which misses. Leslie's shot in answer does not miss and hits Claiborne in the left side and then blows out the cattle rustler's back. Brought down, Leslie advances o his opponent to see if more lead will be required to conclude the evening's foolish festivities, but seeing him coming, Claiborne calls out, "Don't shoot again. I am killed." Indeed, removed by friends to a nearby doctor's abode, the 22-year-old Claiborne perishes six hours later in a killing that will be ruled "self-defense" (sticking it to Leslie one last time, Claiborne's last words are said to be, "Frank Leslie killed Johnny Ringo. I saw him do it!").
Claiborne
The Oriental
News Of The Day
Earps and Clantons gone as the town tries to turn respectable, one problem rowdy remains from Tombstone's wild pass, Buckskin Frank Leslie. 1880s not yet over, the menacing Leslie continues to intimidate the locals ... there are two near gunfights with a miner named James Young over disputed claims (both encounters end peaceful, thanks to Young's at-the-ready double-barrel shotgun), Leslie partners with Oriental Saloon owner Milt Joyce in running a ranch near the rugged Swisshelm Mountains the men name Magnolia (it is 19 miles from Tombstone and all Leslie's by 1885 when Joyce sells out and moves to San Francisco to operate the city's Cafe Royale), holds off an Apache raid from his ranch house, becomes a scout for the U.S. Army's 4th Cavalry when Geronimo leads a small band of miscreants off their reservation, after eight years of marriage, divorces Mary (handing out many beatings over the years, Mary finally tires of Leslie's presence when he has a not-so-secret affair with a local soiled dove named Miss Birdie Woods and also grows weary of becoming the "Silhouette Girl' that Leslie uses for target practice, tracing her profile in bullet holes ... for her troubles, Mary receives a divorce settlement in which she is awarded her legal fees, $650 in cash, and a quarter interest in the Magnolia's operations which includes ownership of 13 horses and 150 heads of cattle), spends a few months as a mounted customs inspector riding the border between the United States and Mexico along the Rio Grande River, and shoots off the boot heel of a cowboy in Tombstone's Birdcage Theater that he believes is not showing the proper respect to one of the establishment's female singers. In 1889, Leslie is back in major trouble once more.
Joyce
Earning extra money as a bouncer and bartender in the Oriental Saloon, Leslie spends much of his time at the town's Birdcage Theater, where he becomes enamored by one of establishment's new entertainers, a glamorous 22-year-old prostitute and singer named Mollie Williams (she also answers to Blonde Mollie and Mollie Bradshaw). Shortly after Leslie takes interest in Williams, her pimp, a man named Bradshaw, is mysteriously killed (when asked if he has killed the man, Leslie remains silent and just grins at his questioner). Freed by the death to start a relationship with each with Bradshaw's death, though unwed, Mollie moves into the Magnolia as Leslie's new wife ... and like the old wife and other women in the gunman's life, she and her lover soon are engaged in almost daily drunken arguments, jealousy, and physical abuse. His internal demons calling, on the night of July 10, 1889, Leslie kills his last victim, Mollie Williams. Returning to the ranch after an evening of imbibing enough whiskey to make him jealous and stupid, Leslie walks into his home, sees Mollie talking with a young ranch hand and wannabee gunfighter named James "Six-Shooter Jim" Neal. Stating, "I'll settle this," with no further explanation, Leslie pulls his revolver and shoots Mollie in the head, killing the women instantly as she falls out of the chair she was sitting in, he then pivots and fires at Neal, dropping him with bullets that find his left breast and arm (saving his own life, when Leslie isn't paying attention, he crawls away into the darkness and manages to crawl to a nearby ranch before being taken to Dr. George E. Goodfellow in Tombstone. No self defense explanation possible with Mollie unarmed when Leslie fired on her, a witness alive that can testify against the culprit, and the town tired of the antics of one of it's most deadly troublemakers, after a preliminary two-day hearing, Leslie is sent to Tucson to stand trial for Mollie's death. Handwriting on the wall, on January 6, 1890, Leslie pleads guilty to the crime and trades on his past service against the Apaches to escape being sentenced to death by hanging and is sentenced to life in prison at the notorious Yuma Territorial Prison (he will be escorted to the prison by fellow hardcase, Sheriff John Horton "Texas John" Slaughter, who delivers his prisoner to his new home so drunk that he can barely walk, where Leslie becomes convict #632).
The Birdcage
Mollie Williams
Dr. Goodfellow
Prison
Up to no good almost immediately, after three months behind bars, Leslie leads five other men on an unsuccessful prison break (the men have almost tunneled their way to freedom when one of the members of the escape group informs on his confederates) that results in the Tombstone gunman being thrown into solitary confinement. Broken by his stint in a dark hole, Leslie emerges from his punishment a changed man and causes no more problems for the institution, becoming a model prisoner instead by using some of his medical knowledge to become a pharmacist in the prison's infirmary. He also begins corresponding with q woman that has read about him in a San Francisco newspaper, the woman that will become his second wife, divorcee Belle Stowell. Friends in high places and continuing pressure from Stowell soon result in Governor Benjamin J. Franklin granting Leslie a full and unconditional pardon on November 17, 1896. Putting Arizona behind him, Leslie buys himself a one-way train ticket to Los Angeles, California. From Los Angeles, he takes another train ride to Stockton, California, where on December 1, 1896, at the San Joaquin County Clerk's office, the 55-year-old miscreant marries the 39-year-old Stowell. A match most certainly not made in Heaven, the couple never make the honeymoon cruise they have planned to China, and four months later, the pair separate, with divorce coming on March 19, 1903 on the grounds of Leslie "failing to provide" for his wife. A bachelor once more, Leslie next makes his way to Texas, where he gets a job tending bar for an Arizona friend named John Ralph "Jack" Dean at Fort Worth's Delaware Cafe, where he organizes a group of companions into a company of gold diggers set to look for glitter in the wilds of Alaska. Wishful thinking, instead of Alaska, in April of 1898, Leslie is in Hermosillo, Mexico, preparing for an expedition into the country's interior with Arizona's Dr. Goodfellow (the same physician that patched up Neal after Leslie shot him) and San Franciscan, Tom Selby. Another endeavor that proves to be more fizzle than fire, Leslie leaves Mexico and enlists in the U.S. Army to fight in the Spanish-American War of 1898, serving in Cuba under the commands of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and Major General Henry Lawton.
Governor Franklin
San Juan Hill, Cuba
War over, at 60-years old, Leslie serves as a guide for a geological survey of parts of Arizona and Mexico led by Professor Edwin Theodore Dumble (for the Southern Pacific Railroad), during which he is robbed by Yaqui bandits near the town of Guaymas (money and his mount are taken before the gunman is turned loose). Again in Mexico in 1900, Leslie finds two years of employment with the Mulatos Mining Company of Nogales. Returning to the United States, Leslie's dark side once more seeps into his activities and he is a participant in a con game to fleece a Nevada mine owner named J.P. Reynolds (Leslie gets lucky and is only charged by the local; authorities with vagrancy), and in 1902, he is arrested for Grand Larceny involving a check for $675. Also in 1902, Leslie assaults his last victim, and as often happens with drunks, the victim is himself ... stooping to pick a pistol that has fallen out of his inner vest pocket, the automatic weapon discharges upon hitting the floor, and the gunman is hit by a bullet that goes through the flesh of his left leg, about four inches above the knee, before then tearing into his right ear and gashing his skull. Healed but disfigured, Leslie also survives the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Forced to relocate after the tragedy, Leslie homesteads for a year on the Orcas Island near Seattle, but defaults on the property before moving to California and settling near the town of Berkeley, where he meets his third bride, 43-year-old Elnora Tolbert. The two marry in Napa in 1913, but wanderlust still in his soul, after relocating to Omak, Washington, Leslie heads south sometime in 1916 at the age of 74 (Elnora will remain in the region until the day she dies), intending to participate in yet another mining expedition to Mexico. The 1920 census shows him living in Sausalito, California in a home owned by his old friend from his Cafe Royale days, James W. Orndorff. In the next census it is noted that Elnora is now a "widow," and although there is no known death record for the man, there is no listing for Leslie anywhere within the 1930 census. His last known location is Oakland, California, where in 1925 he is working in a poolroom that also allows him to sleep there after he has performed his cleanup duties (allows his residence until the establishment fires him for stealing a pistol. To date it is unknown whether he is killed in one last gunfight, dies of natural causes, or commits suicide, but is believed to have passed sometime during his 80th year.
Old Man
One additional tale that needs telling before Leslie rests in peace once more is the story about how he almost goes Hollywood in the early 1920s. One of the first movie stars of the silent era, when William S. Hart decides to make his next film, an oater called Wild Bill Hickok, Leslie is recommended to the actor to serve as a technical advisor on the movie by his former Fort Worth partner, Dean. And the actor is interested, but the opportunity fades away when no one can locate Leslie.
Wild Bill
Buckskin Frank
Great story.
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