John Behan After Tombstone

From Tombstone to the Yuma Territorial Prison

In April 1888, people gathered at Yuma’s Southern Pacific hotel for a dance honoring Thomas Gates and John Behan. By nine o’clock, according to the Arizona Sentinel, the hotel was filled with music and laughter. Supper came around midnight, followed by more dancing into the early morning.

Gates was leaving his position as superintendent of the territorial prison. Behan was taking his place.

Getting there had taken a while.

For several years, newspapers had discussed Behan for one appointment or another. Editors praised his experience, complained when they thought he was being passed over, and sometimes attacked the men they believed responsible. Between those reports came notices of legal trouble, tax-collection work, travel, and serious illness.

The gunfight on Fremont Street had become part of his history. His working life continued.

Still the Sheriff

Early in 1882, Behan was dealing with a complaint over his accounts as Cochise County sheriff.

The Weekly Journal-Miner reported on February 3 that he had been accused of perjury for presenting allegedly false accounts to the county supervisors. The complaint had been filed at Tombstone the preceding Monday. After an investigation, the paper said, the justice discharged him.

Two days later, the Arizona Weekly Citizen gave readers a different explanation of that outcome. Discussing the Tombstone Nugget’s defense of Behan, it said the clerk of the supervisors lacked legal authority to administer oaths. An allegedly false oath before that clerk therefore did not constitute perjury.

The Citizen acknowledged the legal argument but thought little of it as an answer to the public.

We do not have the complete proceedings in these clippings. What we have is a discharge reported by one paper and a legal explanation criticized by another. Neither settles whether the accounts themselves were accurate.

Other newspapers remained friendly toward him. The Journal-Miner, reporting Harry Woods’s departure from the Tombstone Nugget that February, identified Woods as Behan’s deputy and praised Behan’s earlier official service in Yavapai County.

Meanwhile, the sheriff’s regular duties continued. On February 13, the Tombstone Epitaph reported that prisoners recently sentenced by Judge Stilwell had left for Yuma under Behan’s charge.

He was taking prisoners to the territorial prison then. His own employment there was still more than five years away.

By January 1884, Behan had left the sheriff’s office, but some legal business remained unfinished. A Republican report reprinted in the Arizona Weekly Citizen described his return to Tombstone and a conversation with District Attorney Smith. Several indictments found by the grand jury the previous spring were still pending against him.

Behan appeared before Justice Felter. Bonds for his appearance at the next district court term were fixed at $2,500, with E. B. Gage, A. T. Jones, and J. B. Ayers becoming his sureties.

The notice does not identify the charges or give their eventual outcome. It leaves us with Behan back in Tombstone, arranging to answer indictments that had not gone away.

His Name Kept Coming Up

By the spring of 1885, newspapers were discussing Behan for another office.

The Tucson Citizen reported on April 17 that he was visiting the city for a few days and was a prominent candidate for appointment as United States Marshal of Arizona. In May, the Clifton Clarion passed along the Prescott Journal’s prediction that either Behan or T. S. Bunch of Apache County would receive the appointment.

Those reports show that his name was in circulation. They do not announce that he got the job.

Later that year, attention turned toward the territorial prison.

In November, the Daily Tombstone printed a Phoenix Gazette endorsement of Behan for superintendent. Two prison commissioners had resigned, and there was a report that Superintendent Ingalls would follow. If the position opened, the Gazette wanted Behan to have it.

The Tombstone paper agreed. Although it described its own politics as Republican, it expressed respect for Behan as a Democrat and as a man.

That support tells us something about his standing with those editors. Several years after the gunfight, they were willing to recommend him for a position carrying considerable responsibility.

But the opening itself was uncertain. In December, the Arizona Sentinel reprinted an Epitaph notice saying Behan was understood to be an applicant. Then it added a caution: there was no certainty that the office would change hands, and Captain Ingalls’s term would not expire until April 1887.

By February 1886, the Epitaph had grown frustrated. It argued that the prison commissioners should appoint Behan, then predicted they would not. The editor insinuated that money influenced appointments.

A few days later, the paper said Behan had been “sold out” and predicted that Tom Gates would receive the position. George Strauss also came under its criticism.

These were pointed accusations, and they belong to the newspaper making them. The clippings do not prove a purchased appointment or explain exactly how the decision was reached.

They do show that Behan had vocal supporters—and that those supporters believed he had been passed over.

A Job in Tombstone, Then Time Away

Behan was still working in Tombstone in April 1886. An advertisement in the Epitaph identified J. H. Behan as school tax collector, with his office at B. A. Fickas’s district clerk’s office.

Ten days later, the paper reported him confined to bed with dysentery, complicated by other disorders.

By July, he was on his way to California. The Arizona Sentinel noted that he had stopped in Yuma, visited friends, and continued toward Santa Monica. The notice also identified Johnny as the brother of Pete Behan, a prison guard.

That family connection helps keep two men straight in the newspaper record. An April report had announced Pete’s appointment as a guard. It was Pete’s job, not John’s.

The Daily Tombstone reported on July 26 that Johnny’s health was rapidly improving following his arrival at Santa Monica. The paper did not specifically say he had gone there to recover, but it followed his condition while he was away.

He returned to Tombstone by early September. Almost immediately, his name appeared in another political possibility. On September 3, the Daily Tombstone suggested that he might be a “dark horse” for the Democratic nomination for sheriff at the approaching convention.

Whether he pursued that possibility is not established by the notice. But the former sheriff was still being discussed as someone who might return to the office.

The following spring brought another serious illness.

A Phoenix Herald report reprinted in the Weekly Journal-Miner on April 27, 1887, said Behan had suffered for two weeks from inflammation of the bowels. His condition had become dangerous, and Drs. Rosson and Stern were attending him.

The Epitaph carried another report that same day. Dr. George Goodfellow had returned from Phoenix after attending Behan and said his patient was recovering from an abscess in his side. Goodfellow believed he was out of danger unless his condition had changed since the doctor left.

The accounts describe his illness differently. Both make clear that it had been serious.

Finally on the Prison Staff

In September 1887, Behan arrived in Yuma for a position at the territorial prison.

The Arizona Sentinel reported on September 24 that he had reached town the previous morning and was expected to become assistant superintendent.

His brother Peter had resigned as a guard the month before. The notices do not connect Peter’s departure with John’s arrival, but they establish that the brothers’ employment belonged to separate appointments.

Confirmation of John’s new job followed in October. The Arizona Daily Star called him the newly appointed turnkey, replacing Joe Cottrell, who had resigned. Another report, credited to the Yuma Sentinel, identified the position as assistant superintendent and named the same predecessor. The Clifton Clarion carried a closely matching announcement.

The newspapers used both titles. Whatever the precise distinction in prison practice, Behan was now on the staff under Superintendent Gates.

Within weeks, he was involved in a violent escape attempt.

At about 7:30 on the morning of October 27, seven prisoners made a break as a work party was going outside through the north gate. According to an account published in the Mohave County Miner, prisoners seized Gates and threatened to kill him if the guards fired.

Gates struggled with his captors. Other prisoners sought weapons, and fighting spread through the prison grounds.

During the outbreak, a prisoner named Padilla attacked Guard Fredly with a pick. The report credited Turnkey Behan with rescuing the guard. It did not describe how he intervened.

Gates was stabbed. Four prisoners were reported dead, with another wounded.

That brief mention gives Behan a specific place in the account. He was credited with helping a guard under attack. This report does not say he shot anyone, so that is as far as we can take his actions from this source.

The former sheriff had reached Yuma, but his new work was hardly quiet.

Taking Gates’s Place

By March 1888, Gates was preparing to leave.

The Arizona Weekly Enterprise reported that his health would not permit him to manage the prison’s duties and responsibilities through the summer. He intended to go to the seaside to rest and recuperate.

The paper considered Behan a likely successor. It called him the current turnkey and praised his ability to take charge.

This time, the proposed appointment became an actual one.

The Arizona Sentinel reported on April 7 that Gates had resigned and J. H. Behan had been appointed superintendent in his place. B. F. Hartlee would succeed Behan as assistant superintendent.

The paper welcomed the appointments and predicted that Behan would make a good record. That was its assessment at the beginning of his administration; how he managed the prison needs to be followed through the records of his time in office.

For the moment, Yuma marked the change with that Thursday-night dance at the Southern Pacific hotel.

Gates and Behan were the guests of honor. Richard P. Marable served as master of ceremonies. There was supper around midnight, then dancing again until the early morning.

Behan had spent years appearing in notices about appointments he might receive. By the spring of 1888, he had the superintendent’s job. The next reports would concern what he did with it.

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This rough draft draws on your newspaper clippings. The main unresolved point is the nature and outcome of the indictments reported in January 1884; we should keep that gap explicit until further records turn up.