MURDER AND MYTHS

About the Book

Having researched and written extensively about crime and violence in Texas from 1822 to the mid-1990’s, upon moving to New Mexico in 2006, Hatley began looking at a series of crimes that law enforcement and the courts in Territorial New Mexico had stumbled over and left behind them confused and mostly unsolved. He began by collecting a few classic “cold cases,” like the murder of Pat Garrett, and Albert Fountain and his son Henry; like most others, he found no “smoking gun” associated with the Fountain murder, but Pat Garrett is somewhat different.

Other stories of violence had their beginnings far away from New Mexico, in Kansas, Louisiana, and Kentucky. But most of the violence in post Civil War New Mexico was born among the often semi-organized violent feuds that took place earlier in rough and tumble post-Civil War Texas. Where men who fought in what they called the Mason County War and the Sutton-Taylor Feud, for groups called the “Jaybirds” and “Woodpeckers,” would change their names several times, and trade that violent place in Texas, for Arizona’s bleak, and lonely San Simon Valley, or New Mexico’s Organ Mountains.

The “myths” found herein are two of the classic fables coming out of the Old West: The Texas Rangers, who know better, claim their origin over a decade before it actually occurred. The “Ranger myth” in this book is real history. Only cattle, and Indians were not in short supply, guns, and horses often were. Would you journey west in 1873, without either?

About the Author