Frank Stilwell - Stilwell's Murder in Tucson

Stilwell's Murder in Tucson

On March 20, Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp received information that Frank Stilwell, Ike Clanton, Hank Swilling, and another cowboy were watching the passenger trains in Tucson intending to kill Virgil Earp. Wyatt and his assistant deputies Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson, and Sherman McMaster accompanied Virgil and Allie to the rail head in Benson. Fearing another attack, they decided to stay with Virgil and his wife aboard the train to Tucson, armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns. McMaster wore two belts of cartridges. Virgil said later that he had Allie wear his pistol belt where he could easily have access to the weapon if he should need it. Virgil and Allie were scheduled to catch a train in Tucson for Colton, California, where the Earp's parents lived.

Upon their arrival in Tucson, the Earp posse spotted Stilwell and other Cowboys. "Almost the first men we met on the platform there were Stilwell and his friends, armed to the teeth", Virgil later told the San Francisco Examiner. "They fell back into the crowd as soon as they saw I had an escort, and the boys took me to the hotel to supper." Watched over by the well-armed Wyatt and his posse, Virgil and Allie had dinner in Tucson at Porter's Hotel, then reboarded the train.

As the train pulled away from the station, gunfire was heard. Witnesses said they saw men running with weapons but could not identify anyone. Wyatt later told his biographers that he saw Frank Stilwell, and another man he believed to be Ike Clanton, armed with shotguns lying on a flatcar. When Wyatt and his men approached, the two men ran. Stilwell stumbled, allowing Wyatt to catch him. Wyatt later said he shot Stilwell as he attempted to push the barrel of Earp's shotgun away. Stilwell's body was found the next day alongside the tracks riddled with two rounds of buckshot, one in his leg and the other in his chest marked with powder burns, along with four other bullet wounds. His own pistol had not been fired. George Hand, who saw the body, said Stilwell was "the worst shot up man I ever saw."

In a 1926 interview with biographer John H. Flood, Wyatt said that they spotted Stilwell and Clanton armed on a flatcar in the train yard, apparently waiting to ambush the Earps. Both men ran after being confronted by the armed Earp party. Stilwell dropped his weapon and stumbled as he ran in the dark train yard, and Wyatt caught up to him and killed him with a point-blank shotgun blast under the ribs as Stilwell tried to fend off Earp's weapon. Wyatt reported that Stilwell's last words were "Morg! Morg!", probably referring to Morgan Earp.

In a March 1882 interview with the Arizona Daily Star, Virgil Earp told the reporter "Before Stillwell died he confessed that he killed Morg and gave the names of those who were implicated with him. When my brothers were leaving Arizona they got dispatches from Tucson saying that Stillwell and a party of friends were watching all the railroad trains pass­ing that way, and they were going through them in search of all Earps and their friends, carrying shotguns under their overcoats and promising to kill on sight. Our boys were bound to look out for themselves, and when they got near Tucson were very cautious. They found StilIwell near the track and killed him."

Ike Clanton escaped. Afterward, he gave interviews to the newspapers in which he claimed that he and Stilwell had been in Tucson to respond to federal charges of interfering with a U.S. mail carrier, stemming from Stilwell's alleged participation in robbing the Bisbee stage on September 8, 1881. According to Ike, Stilwell disappeared from the hotel before he was found shot dead by the tracks several blocks away. Ike said they heard that the Earps were coming via train and had plans to kill Stilwell. Other accounts reported that Clanton and Stilwell went to the train depot to meet a witness named McDowell who was to appear before the grand jury. Only upon their arrival at the depot did they learn the Earps were in Tucson.

Frank's brother "Comanche Jack" Stilwell soon heard of his brother's death and went west with hopes of avenging him, but he never reached Tombstone and soon went back without doing so.