The Killing of James Leavy in Tucson

A quarrel over a faro game was supposed to be settled by a duel the following morning. Someone decided not to wait.

Seven or eight pistol shots broke the night along Meyer Street in Tucson.

A reporter for the Arizona Daily Star was standing nearby with Police Chief Buttner when they heard the gunfire. They ran toward the Palace Hotel and found gambler and gunfighter James Leavy lying on the sidewalk, his shirtfront soaked with blood.

Leavy was still breathing, but barely.

When his clothing was searched, another fact emerged.

He wasn’t carrying a gun.

Only hours earlier, Leavy and fellow gambler John Murphy had quarreled over a game of faro. The argument had grown serious enough that the two men were reportedly making arrangements to settle it with pistols outside town the following morning.

That duel never happened.

Someone had decided not to wait.

Trouble Over a Faro Game

The trouble began during the afternoon of June 5, 1882.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, Leavy and Murphy were both gamblers and became involved in a dispute over a game of faro. What started at the gaming table continued into the evening, with neither man apparently willing to let the matter drop.

The Star reported that considerable excitement developed around town as word spread that the two men intended to fight a duel.

Leavy reportedly endured what the newspaper described as an extraordinary amount of abuse from Murphy before suggesting they settle the matter outside the city.

Leavy was planning to leave Tucson the following morning. If Murphy wanted satisfaction, Leavy proposed that they go beyond the boundary and settle their disagreement there.

The newspaper described Leavy as remaining remarkably calm during the confrontation, while Murphy was angry and threatening.

The matter had progressed well beyond idle saloon talk.

The two reportedly put up $30 to hire a wagon that would take them to the place where the fight was to occur.

People gathered around the Fashion Saloon as word of the dispute spread. The Star noted that both men were considered dangerous characters and that neither was a stranger to violence.

For James Leavy, that reputation was particularly well established.

A Dangerous Man With a Pistol

Leavy was not simply another gambler claiming to be handy with a gun.

By 1882, he had acquired a reputation across several Western mining and gambling towns as a man who remained unusually composed during a gunfight.

One of his best-known encounters occurred in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1877, when Leavy fought gambler Charlie Harrison.

Harrison was considered dangerous and reportedly fired rapidly once the shooting began.

Leavy did something different.

He took his time.

Rather than emptying his revolver as quickly as possible, Leavy deliberately aimed and fired. Harrison was mortally wounded.

The encounter became part of Leavy’s reputation. Later accounts of Western gunfighters repeatedly emphasized his coolness under fire—the ability to remain steady while another man was shooting at him.

That history gives the Tucson quarrel a darker edge.

Murphy was not threatening a man whose ability with a pistol was unknown.

If the proposed duel took place the following morning, Leavy was likely to be a formidable opponent.

But before that could happen, Tucson’s police chief intervened.

“Fight to the End”

By about 10 o’clock that evening, the quarrel had become public entertainment.

People were gathering around the Fashion Saloon, discussing the proposed duel and the two men involved.

Police Chief Buttner was present during the final stages of the argument and eventually persuaded Leavy to go home.

The immediate danger appeared to have passed.

The Star reporter later described the affair as having reached the point of almost seeming like a burlesque. There had been threats, talk of a duel, and even money collected for a wagon.

But the two men had separated.

Perhaps morning would bring cooler heads.

Chief Buttner and the Star reporter stood near the newspaper office discussing what had happened.

Then Murphy passed down the street.

He was accompanied by another man.

The reporter noticed them but apparently had no immediate reason to believe the quarrel was about to resume.

Less than ten minutes later, the guns began firing.

The reporter counted seven or eight shots.

He and Chief Buttner ran toward the sound.

Near the Palace Hotel on Meyer Street, they found James Leavy.

Gasping His Last Breath

Leavy was lying on the sidewalk.

His shirtfront was saturated with blood.

The Star described him as “gasping his last breath.”

A crowd quickly gathered.

Among those nearby was apparently a man who had been with Leavy when the shooting occurred. The Star reporter attempted to question him, hoping to learn exactly what had happened.

Before he could do so, another gambler intervened and hurried the witness away.

The reporter heard the warning:

“Damn you, don’t say a word until tomorrow morning.”

It was a revealing moment.

Leavy was dying on the sidewalk, the shooters had disappeared, and someone was already making certain that a witness kept his mouth shut.

Chief Buttner, three policemen and the undersheriff began searching the area, but the men believed responsible for the shooting were not immediately found.

Leavy was taken to the morgue.

There was nothing anyone could do for him.

Dr. Holbrook examined the body and found that Leavy had been shot in the neck. Another bullet had passed through the spinal column.

Then came one of the most important details in the Star’s account.

The dead man’s clothing was searched.

James Leavy was completely unarmed.

The Duel That Never Happened

That discovery changed the character of the shooting.

Leavy had certainly been involved in the quarrel. He had agreed to fight. He apparently intended to obtain a weapon and meet Murphy outside town.

There is little reason to portray him as an innocent man who wanted nothing to do with violence.

But according to the contemporary newspaper account, when the actual shooting occurred on Meyer Street, Leavy had no pistol.

The duel that had been arranged for the following morning would presumably have placed two armed men opposite one another.

Whatever happened outside the Palace Hotel was something very different.

The Star attempted to reconstruct Leavy’s movements.

After the argument, Leavy started toward home. At some point he apparently decided he needed to obtain a weapon for the proposed encounter the next morning and returned downtown.

He was accompanied by another man.

Near the Palace Hotel, men approached.

Then the shooting began.

Exactly who fired each shot was not immediately clear. The most important witness had been discouraged from talking, and Murphy initially provided little useful information.

But seven or eight shots had been fired.

Leavy never fired one of them.

He had no gun.

Murphy Arrested

Chief Buttner continued searching for Murphy after the killing.

At about two o’clock in the morning, Murphy was located and arrested.

The Star reported an intriguing detail: two chambers of Murphy’s revolver were empty.

Murphy acknowledged involvement in the shooting but indicated that others had also participated.

The investigation soon extended beyond him.

William Moyer and David Gibson would also become implicated in Leavy’s death.

The murder eventually became a complicated territorial criminal case involving arrests, escape, recapture and trials.

Murphy and Gibson were ultimately acquitted. Moyer was convicted and sentenced to life in the Yuma Territorial Prison, although he would later receive a pardon.

For Tucson residents reading the first newspaper account, however, all of that was still in the future.

What they knew was much simpler.

Two gamblers had quarreled.

They had arranged a duel.

One of them was dead.

Not the Hollywood West

James Leavy’s death is worth remembering because it bears little resemblance to the gunfight mythology that later came to define the Old West.

There was talk of a duel, certainly.

There were threats and reputations to defend.

There were men known to be dangerous with pistols.

But there was no carefully staged confrontation in the middle of a dusty street, with two gunfighters facing one another and waiting for someone to draw.

Instead, the Arizona Daily Star recorded something much more typical of frontier violence.

An argument.

Threats.

A crowd gathering outside a saloon.

Men separating.

A nighttime street.

Then seven or eight shots.

By the time the reporter reached Meyer Street, the fight was already over.

One of the West’s experienced gunfighters was bleeding to death on the sidewalk.

The Last Gunfight of James Leavy

There is an irony in the way Leavy died.

His reputation had been built partly upon his ability to remain calm when facing an armed opponent. He had survived encounters in which other men fired first. His method was not simply to shoot quickly, but to keep his nerve and make his shots count.

On the night of June 5, 1882, none of that mattered.

Leavy had apparently been willing to meet Murphy the following morning. The wagon had been discussed. Money had been collected. The place was to be somewhere beyond the boundary.

Had the duel occurred, perhaps Leavy’s reputation would have served him again.

Or perhaps Murphy would have killed him.

There is no way to know.

Because the duel never took place.

Instead, a Daily Star reporter standing with Tucson’s police chief heard a sudden burst of gunfire and ran toward the Palace Hotel.

There he found James Leavy on the sidewalk.

His shirt was soaked with blood.

A witness was being told not to talk.

The shooters were gone.

And when officers searched the dying gunfighter, they found no revolver.

James Leavy had survived armed confrontations across the West.

His last one ended before he ever got the chance to draw.

---

Tarnished West Research Note

This story is based primarily on the contemporary Arizona Daily Star account of the killing. The newspaper spelled the victim’s surname “Levy,” while James Leavy is commonly used in surviving records and later historical research.

The newspaper’s immediate account is particularly valuable because its reporter was close enough to hear the shots, run to the scene, see Leavy before he died, attempt to question a witness, and observe the beginning of the police investigation.

For that reason, where later versions of the killing conflict with the contemporary account, The Tarnished West gives greater weight to what was reported in Tucson at the time.