On a hillside along some forgotten wagon trail, a shotgun blast ended Martin Ringo’s life before his family ever reached California. The report had barely faded before the eyewitness saw the man’s hat blown twenty feet into the air, his brains scattered in all directions. “I never saw a more heart-rending sight,” the witness later wrote, “and to see the distress and agony of his wife and children was painful in the extreme. ” The death cast a gloom over the whole company as they buried Martin on the hillside and pressed on toward San Jose, leaving his teenage son John Peters Ringo to carry the weight of a father lost to an accidental discharge of his own gun.
That boy would grow into one of the most enigmatic outlaws of the Western frontier, a figure whose name would become tangled with the Cowboys, the Earps, and one of the most disputed deaths in Arizona history. John Peters Ringo was born on May 3, 1850, in Wayne County, Indiana, the oldest of five children born to Dutch immigrants Martin and Mary Ringo. He was loosely related to the Younger brothers who ran with Frank and Jesse James, though the connection did little to shape the path he would take. The family moved to Liberty, Missouri, for a couple of years in 1856, then to Gallatin, Missouri, in 1858, before setting out for San Jose, California, in the summer of 1864.
Martin Ringo’s health had been failing under the weight of tuberculosis, and he had heard that the drier air of California might offer some relief. The long, grueling trip across the country was a devastating adventure in itself, difficult and dangerous at every turn. During the journey, the teenage Ringo sustained a serious foot injury, the family wagon was attacked by Indians, and he witnessed the murder of a man traveling with the wagon train. Then came the loss of his father.
When Martin jumped off the wagon to scout for Indians in the area, his shotgun accidentally discharged, killing him instantly. Little is known about Ringo over the next five years in California, though census data shows him working as a farmer. In 1869, he left his mother and siblings in San Jose and moved to Mason County, Texas, where he met and befriended Scott Cooley, an ex-Texas Ranger and the adopted son of local rancher Tim Williamson. With that move, Ringo’s first brush with serious trouble was in close pursuit.
In 1875, accused rustlers Elijah and Pete Backus were dragged from the Mason jail and lynched by a predominantly German mob. Then, on May 13 of that year, Williamson was arrested by a hostile posse and eventually murdered by a German farmer named Peter Bader. Cooley responded by rallying Williamson’s friends, including Ringo, to retaliate against Bader and the posse members in what became known as the Mason County War, or the Hoodoo War, as it was called locally. Ringo’s involvement in the war was not over cattle.
It was the result of the slaying of Moses Baird and the serious wounding of George Gladden, both close friends of his. Baird and Gladden had been tricked by a local gambler named James Chaney into riding to Mason, only to be ambushed in an attack orchestrated by Mason County Sheriff John Clark. On September 25, Ringo joined seven other men to avenge Baird’s death. When the party rode into Mason, Ringo and a man named Bill Williams separated from the group and headed for Chaney’s home, where they killed the gambler without warning.
Arrest warrants were never issued for Ringo in Chaney’s murder, despite reports that the two boasted of the killing when they got back to town. According to reports at the time, Ringo or Williams was quoted as saying they had “made beef” of Chaney, and if someone did not bury him, he would stink. The Mason County War officially ended in November 1876 with a final toll of roughly twelve people dead. Scott Cooley was believed dead as well, and Ringo and his friend George Gladden ended up in jail.
While incarcerated, one of Ringo’s purported cellmates was the notorious killer John Wesley Hardin. Gladden was sentenced to ninety-nine years, but Ringo was acquitted two years later. Ringo served briefly as a constable in Loyal Valley, Texas, before traveling to Arizona in 1879, arriving in Cochise County with Joseph Graves Almy, known as Joe Hill, a friend from his Mason County War days. In December of that same year, a drunk Ringo was bending an elbow at a saloon in Safford when he shot Lewis Hancock.
Hancock’s offense: refusing a free shot of whiskey from Ringo, stating that he preferred beer. Shortly after that killing, Ringo moved on to Tombstone. In Tombstone, Ringo quickly gained a reputation for a bad temper. He was believed to be connected with the notorious outlaw group called the Cowboys and was possibly involved in several murders and robberies with them, though none of that is documented in the historical record.
While Ringo was not directly involved in the infamous gunfight at the O. K. Corral, he was suspected of being involved in the ambush of Virgil Earp in December 1881, which left the elder Earp crippled, as well as the murder of Morgan Earp while he was shooting pool in Tombstone in March 1882. Ringo harbored a very strong hatred of the Earps and all things Earp-related, including Doc Holliday.
Things between Ringo and Holliday came to a hard boil on January 17, 1882, when the pair traded threats. The exchange grew so heated that Tombstone Chief of Police James Flynn, who was nearby and witnessed the two threatening each other, arrested both men and brought them before a judge on charges of carrying weapons within town limits. Both were fined and released. Judge William Stilwell then followed up on Ringo’s outstanding robbery charges from Galeyville, Arizona, rearresting him.
Ringo was held in jail for the weekend and released when no witnesses would speak against him. In March 1882, Wyatt Earp and his posse killed Cowboy member Frank Stilwell in their quest for justice for the ambushing of Virgil and the murder of Morgan. Following the killing, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan received warrants from a Tucson judge for the arrest of Earp and Holliday. Behan formed his own posse to ride after the Earp party.
This Behan posse consisted of Ringo and nineteen others, many of them friends of Stilwell and the Cowboys. During his vendetta ride, Earp killed a close friend of Ringo’s and fellow Cowboy, Bill Brocius, in a gunfight at Iron Springs, about twenty miles west of Tombstone. According to a statement Earp gave to his biographer, a man named Florentino Cruz confessed to being the lookout during Morgan’s attack and identified Ringo, Stilwell, Swilling, and Brocius as the killers of Morgan Earp. Later-day historians have cast serious doubt on Earp’s account being factual.
While the Behan posse would come close to encountering the Earp posse, they never faced each other. Back in Tombstone on July 4, 1882, a celebratory Ringo got fully liquored up for the Independence Day celebrations. He sobered up a couple of days later and left Tombstone with a couple of bottles of whiskey in tow for the ride. A couple more days passed before Deputy Billy Breckenridge saw Ringo near Dial’s Ranch in the south pass of the Dragoon Mountains.
Breckenridge later wrote that Ringo was very drunk, reeling in the saddle. “I encouraged him to follow me back to the Goodrich Ranch,” Breckenridge recalled, “but he was drunk and stubborn and went on his way. I think this was the last time he was seen alive. ”
At about three in the afternoon on July 13, ranch hands at a nearby ranch shot at a figure on horseback, though it was unclear whether they hit anything.
The following day, teamster James Yost was hauling wood in Turkey Creek Canyon when he came across Ringo’s lifeless body, still seated on a large rock in the middle of a grouping of five blackjack oak trees that grew from a single root, forming a semicircle. Ringo’s body, missing its boots, had already turned black from the desert heat. The coroner determined that Ringo had likely been dead for twenty-four hours when he was found. Strips of undershirt were wrapped around his feet for protection, as if he had walked a distance without his boots.
In his report, the coroner stated he had “evidently traveled but a short distance in this footgear. ”
There was a bullet hole in Ringo’s right temple and an exit wound at the back of his head. The fatal wound was upward at a forty-five degree angle, between the right eye and ear. His revolver was still in his right hand.
With that, the official cause of death was determined to be suicide. Ringo would have been thirty-two at the time. Items found in Ringo’s possession at the time of his death included his Colt . 45 revolver, a Winchester .
45 model 1876 octagon barrel rifle numbered 21,896, with eleven cartridges, a cartridge belt with nine rifle cartridges, a cartridge belt with two revolver cartridges, an American Watch Company silver pocket watch and chain, cash of two dollars and sixty cents, six revolver cartridges in a pocket, five shirt studs, a small pocket knife, a comb, a block of matches, a small bit of tobacco, and part of a letter addressed to Ringo from Tucson attorneys Hereford and Zabriskie. The coroner also found that Ringo’s revolver still had five rounds left in it, with the hammer resting on the gun’s only empty chamber. Ringo’s horse was found eleven days later, about two miles from where his body was discovered, with his boots still tied to the saddle. Despite the ruling of suicide, others believed Ringo’s death was not at his own hand.
They cited a lack of gunpowder burns on Ringo’s head as one reason, though given the advanced state of the body’s decomposition when it was found, the coroner’s report does not mention finding or not finding powder residue. Ringo’s body was also found with a cut on his scalp and his cartridge belt on upside down. Robert Boller, a member of the coroner’s jury, wrote in 1934: “I showed where the bullet had entered the tree on the left side. Blood and brains oozing from the wound and matted his hair.
There was an empty shell in the six-shooter and the hammer was on that. I called it a suicide fifty-two years ago. I am still calling it suicide. I guess I’m the last of the coroner’s jury.
”
A century and a half later, the question still stands unanswered. A few things are certain. The man had a lot of blood on his hands, and that can weigh heavily on a mind, especially when you drink heavily as he was known to do regularly. Ringo was also reported to have a history of threatening suicide.
And both Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had motives to see Ringo dead, and both were likely in the area around the time of his death, searching for Cowboy members involved in the shooting of Virgil Earp and the murder of Morgan Earp. As if those reasons were not enough to muddy the water, another twist emerged. While serving time in the Yuma Territorial Prison for killing his wife, Buckskin Frank Leslie allegedly confessed to a guard that he had killed Ringo. Few people believed his story.
Some thought he was simply claiming credit for it to curry favor with Earp’s inner circle or for whatever notoriety it might bring him. One thing is certain: we will probably never know how Ringo died that day, especially since Ringo is not talking today. Visitors can still see his grave in Cochise County, located on private property, though a gate on a nearby road allows them to view the gravesite from a distance.
