Assassination
Two months after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in December 1881, Virgil Earp was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt that left him with a permanently crippled left arm. By February 1882, Morgan grew wary of the danger to the Earps in Tombstone and sent his common-law wife Louisa Houstin Earp to the Earps' parents in Colton, California. However, Morgan chose to remain in Tombstone to guard Virgil, support Wyatt, and continue to work in law enforcement.
At 10:50 p.m. on Saturday, March 18, 1882, Morgan was ambushed after returning from a musical at Schieffelin Hall. He was playing a late round of billiards at the Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor against owner Bob Hatch. Dan Tipton, Sherman McMaster, and Wyatt watched, having received threats that same day.
The assailant shot through a glass-windowed, locked door which opened onto a dark alley between Allen and Fremont Streets. Morgan was struck in the right side and the bullet shattered his spine, passed through his left side, and lodged in the thigh of George A.B. Berry. Another bullet lodged in the wall over Wyatt's head. After he was shot, his brothers tried to help him stand, but Morgan said "Don't, I can't stand it. This is the last game of pool I'll ever play." Drs. Matthews, Goodfellow and Millar examined him a short time later and said the wound was fatal.
Wyatt was quoted by Lake in Frontier Marshal as saying that Morgan, before dying, whispered to Wyatt, "I can't see a damned thing." Wyatt said that they had promised each other to report visions of the next world when at the point of death. Morgan died on a lounge in an adjoining card room less than an hour after he was shot. (The Campbell and Hatch Billiard parlor and card room, two lots east of Hafford's Saloon on 4th Street and Allen, burned in a fire in May 1882.)
Morgan was laid out in a blue suit belonging to Doc Holliday. The Earps took his body by wagon the next day to the New Mexico and Arizona railroad station in Contention. From there, his older brother James Earp accompanied Morgan's body to Colton, California where Morgan's wife and parents were waiting. Morgan was first buried in the old city cemetery of Colton, near Mount Slover. When the cemetery was moved in 1892, Morgan's body was reburied in the Hermosa Cemetery in Colton.
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