Tombstone, Arizona Territory — February 1884

By February 1884, the five men accused of carrying out the bloody robbery at Bisbee were in custody or facing prosecution. But the case had widened beyond the men accused of firing the rifles.

Attention had also settled on John Heith.

Heith had joined the pursuit after the December 8 raid. Later, prosecutors accused him of complicity in the crime. His case was tried separately from those of the five alleged gunmen.

The Case Against Heith

A newspaper dispatch from Tombstone dated February 16 reported that Heith’s trial was then in progress and described the testimony against him as highly damaging. The account identified one of the prosecution witnesses as Sergeant Lawrence, a fellow prisoner.

Lawrence testified that, after Heith was jailed, Heith made statements to him concerning Tex Howard and the planning of the Bisbee raid.

According to Lawrence, Heith said Howard had left him in Bisbee on the morning of December 4 and gone to Brickles’ ranch to notify the remainder of the gang to prepare for the raid. Lawrence further testified that the plan called for Howard not to return with Dowd and the others, but instead to continue to Clifton so that Howard and Heith could establish an alibi if suspicion fell upon them.

The newspaper reported Lawrence’s testimony as an allegation made in court. It does not make the alleged conversation independently verifiable, and it should not be treated as Heith’s proven confession.

Lawrence also testified that Heith blamed Howard for his predicament and said Howard had departed from the supposed plan. According to the testimony, Howard returned with the other men because he wanted to confront Deputy Sheriff Daniels over reports that Heith and Howard were train robbers.

More Testimony from the Jail

Lawrence’s testimony did not stop with the alleged planning of the raid.

He also told the court that Heith had brought saws into the jail and had paid a discharged prisoner forty dollars to obtain a file for him.

The February 16 newspaper report was openly confident about the prosecution’s case, stating that Heith’s conviction appeared assured. That was the newspaper’s judgment while the trial was still underway—not a verdict of the court.

The same report said Tex Howard had offered to reveal the entire affair, but that Lawrence’s testimony was considered so damaging that Howard might not be called. Whether Howard ultimately testified is not established by the clipping used for this account.

Conviction and Sentence

Heith was convicted of complicity in the Bisbee killings.

On February 21, 1884, he was sentenced to imprisonment for life.

The sentence sharply separated Heith’s legal fate from that of the five men accused of directly carrying out the raid. They faced death sentences. Heith, convicted for his role in the crime, was to live out his sentence in prison.

He would never begin that life sentence.

The Morning of February 22

On the following morning, shortly before eight o’clock, approximately one hundred men gathered at the Cochise County courthouse in Tombstone.

A contemporary dispatch described them principally as miners from the Contention and Grand Central mines, which had been shut down. From the larger crowd, seven men from Bisbee were selected to approach the jail.

The timing worked in their favor.

It was about the hour when breakfast was normally brought to the prisoners. When the men knocked, jailor Billy Ward apparently believed food had arrived and opened the door without first determining who was outside.

He was immediately covered with weapons.

The men demanded the jail keys. Ward, faced with armed resistance, surrendered them.

Heith Taken from His Cell

A group entered the jail, went to Heith’s cell, unshackled him and brought him into the corridor.

The newspaper reported that the crowd first intended to hang Heith from the banister of the stairs leading to the second story of the jail. That plan was abandoned.

Instead, they decided to take him to a telegraph pole near the lower edge of town.

The crowd emerged from the courthouse with Heith and started down Toughnut Street.

Sheriff Ward Tries to Stop Them

At the courthouse door they encountered Sheriff Ward.

The contemporary account quoted him ordering the crowd to stop: “Stop this! You have got to stop this right here!”

His intervention failed.

The newspaper reported that Ward was picked up and thrown down the steps. The crowd continued with Heith down Toughnut Street toward the selected execution site.

The trip from the jail was not described as a slow procession. The newspaper said it was made “on a run,” with Heith keeping in the lead.

At the Telegraph Pole

At the execution site, Heith reportedly took a handkerchief from his pocket and addressed the men around him.

He declared that they were hanging an innocent man and said they would discover the truth before Dowd and the other condemned men were hanged on March 28.

Heith then made one specific request: that his body not be mutilated by gunfire after he was hanged.

His eyes were covered with the handkerchief.

Moments later, John Heith was hanging from a rope fastened to the crossbar of a telegraph pole.

The Newspaper’s Judgment

The contemporary dispatch reported that Heith displayed considerable nerve at the end. It also asserted that, had the crowd not been absolutely certain of his guilt, his life probably would have been spared.

That statement is revealing, but it is not a judicial finding. It records the newspaper’s assessment of the lynching and of the crowd’s belief in Heith’s guilt.

No attempt was made that morning to seize the other prisoners who were under sentence of death. The newspaper reported that the community was waiting to see them legally executed.

Heith received no such wait.

A Sentence Overturned by a Mob

Less than a day separated John Heith’s sentence of life imprisonment from his death on the telegraph pole.

His trial had produced testimony alleging that he knew of the Bisbee raid before it occurred and had participated in its planning. A jury convicted him, but did not sentence him to death.

The men who removed him from the Tombstone jail imposed a different punishment.

Heith maintained his innocence at the end.

Whether every allegation made against him can now be independently established is another question. What is documented is that a court sentenced him to life imprisonment on February 21, 1884, and that the next morning an armed crowd took him from the county jail and hanged him.

The five men accused of carrying out the Bisbee raid remained alive.

For them, the gallows were already waiting.

Source Note

This post is based on contemporary February 1884 newspaper dispatches supplied with this research: one reporting testimony during John Heith’s trial and another describing his February 21 life sentence and the February 22 seizure and lynching at Tombstone. Testimony attributed to Sergeant Lawrence is presented as testimony rather than independently established fact. The contemporary trial clipping printed Heith’s first name as “James”; this post uses John Heith, the name adopted for this series. Later embellishments not supported by the supplied contemporary accounts have been omitted.