Meet the Clantons -- VI

The inquest into the shootings concluded that the three cowboys met their deaths by gunshot wounds.

Duh.

The Tombstone Nugget recorded this sarcastic article.

Glad to Know

The people of the community are deeply indebtyed to the twelcve intelligent men who composed the coroners (sic) jury for the valuable information that the three persons who were killed last Wednesday were shot. Some thirty or forty shots were fired, and the whole affair was witnessed by perhaps a dozen people, and we have a faint recollection of hearing someone say the dead men were shot, but people are liable to be mistaken and the verdict reassures us. We might have thought they had been struck by lightning or stung to death by hornets and we never could have told whether they were in the way of the lightning or the lightning was in their way.

Now listen to this.


Warrants were issued for the arrest of the Earps and Doc Holliday on the charge of murder. A hearing was held before Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer. It lasted for a month, and several witnesses testified that Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were unarmed and that Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were mortally wounded before they drew their pistols.




Wells Spicer

Still, Justice Spicer’s “opinion” was that the Earps acted in self defense. He sent on to say, however, that Virgil Earp “committed an injudicious and censurable act” in calling upon Wyatt Earp and J. H. Holliday to assist him in arresting and disarming the Clantons and McLaurys.

Then, Virgil Earp was wounded from ambush, and Wyatt went on a rampage in January 1882.