Tom Horn: The Most Polarizing Anti-Hero of the Wild West

[Music] this video brought to you by magic spoon my longtime subscribers know i'm a bit of a fan of cereal but you know cereal is great but it's not always great for you there were several years there where i just never ate syria at all because it's just got so much sugar and you know something your body doesn't need that it might be like oh cereal is amazing but i don't need all that sugar look i don't have the healthiest diet in the world but i generally know that i can keep an okay shape if i don't eat tons of unnecessary sugar anyway along come magic spoon and they're like yo simon check this out we do cereal but it's got zero grams of sugar i've got not all of them here they make a whole bunch of flavors but i've got my favorite flavor honestly by far it is incredible peanut butter zero grams of sugar four net carbs four grams of net carbs 14 grams of protein similar story here on fruity similar story here on choco similar story on the other flavors that i'm putting on the screen 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specialty i look at it as a business proposition and i think i have a corner on the market those are the spoken words of tom horne a controversial figure of the old west we say controversial not because he was a criminal who ended up being celebrated by the public there were certainly plenty of those around no his controversy stems more from the fact that even now over a hundred years since his death people still aren't quite sure where to place him he wouldn't be the first person from the wild west to walk both sides of the law wyatt earp wild bill hickok batmasterson all did it too however none of them seem to shift from one extreme to the other quite like tom horn one day he's a lawman or is enrolled in the army and the next day he serves more or less as a hitman so was he a good guy or a bad guy was he truly a cold-blooded killer or was he a loudmouth who built his reputation mainly on bragging a tactic that eventually led to his doom we explored these questions today as we look at the polarizing figure of tom horne thomas horne jr was born on november 21 1860 on the family farm in scotland county missouri near the city of memphis he was one of eight children of thomas horn senior and mary miller both natives of ohio who relocated to missouri in 1852. tom horne grew up during a troublesome time according to his own words understandable given that he was born shortly before the outbreak of the civil war the region where the horn family lived in northeast missouri was mainly neutral during the conflict and as horn put it usually sided with the uniform that was knocking on the front door the family had soldiers occasionally stay with them and young horn remembered one time when a confederate captain and enlisted men were at their house for a while only to get ambushed shortly after leaving with the enlisted man getting killed in the attack the horn family was pretty successful it grew its business continuously and was always buying new lots by the time tom horne was a teenager his parents owned over 1200 acres of land and were worth tens of thousands of dollars if he were more predisposed to a quiet and peaceful life he could have done what his brothers did and purchased some property from their parents and start working the land however tom horne was not suited for that life ever since he was young he discovered that he preferred going out into the wild and getting into trouble as a boy his favorite pastime was hunting alongside his faithful dog shredrick which he called shred even during the winter months when there was no work to do on the farm and he was supposed to go to school he could not resist the allure of a fresh pair of animal tracks in the snow he would often skip class fetch shred and go out hunting even though he knew this would earn him a beating from his mother all of this information by the way comes straight from tom horn himself who wrote his autobiography while in prison and it's entitled life of tom horne government scout and interpreter when he was 14 horn experienced what he described as the first and only real sorrow of his life he got into a fight with two boys passing through town and one of them shot and killed shred afterwards horn thought that it was maybe time for him to leave home and go someplace else he finally decided to do this after catching another beating from his father a good one as he put it that left him bedridden for a week when he recovered horn sold his rifle for some money kissed his mother goodbye paid one last visit to shreds grave and headed out into the wild wild west after striking out on his own horn spent the next couple of years drifting from place to place he relied often on the kindness of strange farmers who would give him a meal maybe even wash his clothes he found odd jobs where he could first working on the railroad then helping to deliver freight then as a stagecoach rider and finally as a herder during this time he traveled throughout new mexico and arizona and learned to speak almost fluent spanish which would come in handy later during his last herding job the 16 year old tom horn met al sieber a former union army scout who was impressed with the boy's knowledge and abilities and hired him as a spanish translator slash assistant during the apache wars seba attained the rank of chief of scouts and as his protege horn rose through the ranks as a civilian scout himself horn spent almost 10 years with the scouts and in 1885 was made a chief as well by all accounts tom horn acquitted himself well in his years working as a scout but his version of events presented in his autobiography might be a bit on the over-indulgent side some claimed that he made remain unverifiable from other sources while others provably false he said that he was fluent in apache but in reality he was never used as an interpreter in formal negotiations he said that he took an apache girl named saun as his housekeeper but it was always rumored that she was actually his common law wife who may have had one or two of his children horn's biggest claims however had to do with the famed apache leader geronimo a key figure during the apache wars geronimo surrendered on several occasions only to resume his activities a while later after his final surrender in 1886 horn said that he served as interpreter during the peace talks between geronimo and sieber hand-picked by the apache leader himself many historians believe this is completely made up as records indicate that horn was only ever used for spanish to english translations not to mention that there would be no reason for alceba to be there as the united states side of the negotiations was handled by first lieutenant charles gatewood or big nose captain as the apache called him at the very least it seems like tom horne did indeed meet geronimo as he was part of the escort who took the apache leader as prisoner of war to fort bowie after this event horn was discharged from the scouts and he began a new chapter in his life for a while he worked as a prospector in aravaipa arizona he then tried his hand at being a rancher and also took part in a few rodeos showing off his shooting prowess as well as his steer ripping skills around 1887 he had some sort of involvement in the pleasant valley war a very violent ranged dispute between two arizona families his exact role is uncertain because again we mainly have his word to go on in his book horn claimed that he was a mediator but seeing as this was one of the bloodiest range wars in united states history it is far more probable that he served as a hard gun tom horne's big career move happened around 1890 when he started working for the pinkerton detective agency at first he was a part-timer sought out for his tracking skills by other agents who needed some help catching cattle thieves his first bit of glory with the pinkertons came in august 1891 when horne and another agent cw doc shores were in pursuit of a couple of train robbers who had targeted the denver and rio grande western railroad near catopaxy colorado dock shores had already worked together with tom horn before to catch some horse thieves and he had made his impression of the man which he included in his report shaw's considered horn to be a capable agent but thought he was ruthless with little regard for human life and described him as not the type of man one liked to argue with anyway on this particular adventure horn acquitted himself well the duo followed the robbers for 300 miles through multiple territories until they reached paul's valley near oklahoma city there they managed to capture one of them without a fight and while shaw's took him back to denver tom horn stayed behind and waited for his partner in crime to return although it ended up being far less dramatic than one would expect horn detailed the events after several days of waiting on my part he did come back and as he came riding up to the house i stepped out and told him someone had come he was pegleg watson and considered by everyone in colorado as a very desperate character i had no trouble with him when i captured my man got to a telegraph station wired mr mcfarland that i had the notorious peg the superintendent wired back good a different version of this story said that horn intended to kill his target instead of taking him into custody because the train robber had threatened him and it was the intervention of a rancher's wife that stopped him from doing so again we run into trouble when we have to take tom horn at his word because as many people concluded his word wasn't worth that much some historians even argued that he might have had some kind of clinical condition and that he boasted and exaggerated his deeds so much out of a deep sense of inadequacy although horn portrayed himself as some kind of hero within the pinkerton agency his next high-profile jobs went decidedly worse for the detective first there was one mission where he had to track down a group of felons who targeted a train near salem oregon but not only did he fail to do so horn ended up getting arrested for sticking up a casino in reno nevada and it was only because the pinkerton agency interceded on his behalf that he managed to avoid a jail sentence his second failure went even worse as tom horne once again found himself embroiled in a violent range conflict this one in wyoming known as the johnson county war when one of the leading figures in the dispute a man named frank canton wrote to the pinkerton agency and asked for someone who was a good detective and tracker he got a reply from william pinkerton himself recommending tom horne at the very least this showed that there were people who held horn in pretty high esteem william pinkerton said tom horne who used to be with our denver office would be a good man for the place and i will ask mcparland to communicate with him and see if he cannot be god for the service and for the length of time you want him you probably know of him he is well acquainted all through the western country among cattle rustlers and all that class of men and is a thorough horseman and plainsman in every sense of the word horn accepted the job and worked undercover for the wyoming stock growers association wsga one of the two sides in the johnson county war unofficially the gunmen hired by the wsga were known as the invaders and were led by a man named frank walcott this was a bloody conflict that saw numerous victims either gunned down in shootouts or lynched after being accused of cattle rustling the invaders were often denounced as being nothing but hired killers who had a list of people who needed to die one way or another in order for the wsga to be able to claim their lands the war culminated with a shootout at the casey ranch where a farmer named nate champion single-handedly killed at least four invaders before being gunned down himself afterwards an angry posse of 200 locals was formed by the local sheriff with the intent of taking down the invaders and they forced walcott's men to take refuge and barricade themselves inside another ranch with nothing to do but wait for the governor of wyoming to send in the cavalry to protect them from what would have surely been a swift execution afterwards they were charged with various crimes but as soon as they made bail all the gunfighters scattered and returned to their home states it's hard to say with any accuracy what kind of role tom horne played in the proceedings but he certainly wasn't hired for his winning personality he had a reputation of being more than happy to pull the trigger whenever necessary but we don't know if he actually killed anyone during this conflict it has been said that he killed 17 people during his lifetime but this was likely just more exaggeration from horn himself while the actual number was much lower but regardless of how tom horn acted during the johnson county war the scandal that followed was enough for the agency to sever its ties with the gunman and tom horn was no longer a pinkerton [Music] once tom horne was on his own again he found work as a stock detective back then a stock detective was a man hired by ranchers to prevent and deter cattle theft or to help bring the thieves to justice the scope of the work done by a stock detective varied at its best he acted mainly as a private investigator who collected evidence to secure legal convictions at its worst stock detective was just a fancier way of saying gun for hire where exactly tom horn fell on that spectrum is again pretty hard to say but at the very least his first gig seemed to be on the up-and-up horn began working as a stock detective in 1893 for the swan land and cattle company one of the largest livestock operations in the west he was based at the two-bar ranch near chugwater wyoming and was tasked with finding proof that a local named fred langhof and his associates were stealing cattle ultimately when he felt that the noose around his neck was getting tighter langhoff disappeared and his business partners dispersed as well he left his sister eva in charge of their ranch but she was acquitted it was perhaps this initial failure in his new career as a stock detective that persuaded tom horn to seek out more direct solutions in the future rather than waste time on trivial matters such as evidence and trials in the couple of years that followed he was accused of killing two settlers who were suspected of stealing cattle the first was named william lewis and the second fred powell both men were working on their respective ranches when they were struck down by rifle shots coming from an unseen shooter in both cases horn was immediately suspected and brought in for questioning but he always maintained a calm demeanor and had an alibi at the ready so he was never convicted of anything in informal circles though he made insinuations and bragged about killing cattle rustlers so many believe that each time horn was brought in to commit murder in order to send a message towards the end of the century tom horne took a break from being a stock detective in order to do some government work in 1898 the spanish-american war erupted and horn joined the army in a non-combatant role as a packer he traveled to cuba where he served as the chief packer with the fifth corps he did his job well for a couple of months but was then left bedridden with an illness either yellow fever or malaria he was deemed unfit for combat and was returned to the united states bringing his servers to an abrupt end while he was on the mend horn involved himself in what was the hottest topic of the day in the west the wilcox train robbery on the 2nd of june 1899 three or more unidentified criminals held up a union pacific train near wilcox wyoming they disengaged the locomotive from the passenger cars crossed a bridge and then blew it up with dynamite so they couldn't be followed afterwards they blew up the safe as well and made off with tens of thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry a shootout later ensued between the robbers and a posse during which the outlaws killed sheriff josiah hazen nobody knew for sure who the robbers were although everyone suspected that members of the hole-in-the-wall gang were involved a criminal group that would later become better known as butch cassidy's wild bunch tom horne has contacted the pinkertons claiming that he had information from bill speck a rancher sympathetic to the outlaws here's what horn said on january 2nd i went to the house of an old bill speck and stayed all night with him occasionally i would bring up the train robbery and he never wanted to talk about it so on the morning of the fourth when i was going to leave i told him that he had some information that i wanted and he must give it to me or i would kill him and be done with it well that was just what spec was looking for and he commenced to cry and said that the rest of the wrestlers would kill him if he told i told him i was worse than they because i would surely kill then and there if he did not tell me as no man was within eight miles of us afterwards bill speck proceeded to identify the three robbers as george flatnose curry harvey kid curry logan and a third stranger who was only described to him as coming from the british possessions and being able to blow christ off the cross with dynamite again horn was mainly repeating what everybody else already suspected and we only have his word that this exchange with bill speck actually took place even so it seemed that it was enough to get him some detective work again as he teamed up for a while with pinkerton agent charlie soringo to try and track down the outlaws ultimately this partnership didn't last long and horn was not present for any of the gunfights that followed instead horn worked as a stock detective again this time in colorado where there were quite a few violent conflicts between cattle owners and sheep owners over grazing rights once more the term stock detective meant little else than killer fajar because horne was again suspected of murdering two men believed to be cattle thieves their names were matt rash and ism dart and tom horne was implicated in their deaths but never charged with anything [Music] even if tom horne had indeed killed multiple men and gotten away with it just like he bragged it was only a matter of time until his luck ran out and that happened on july the 18th 1901 when he allegedly committed a heinous act deemed unforgivable even the wild west on that morning willie nicholl was shot in the back and killed while riding a horse near his family ranch northwest of cheyenne wyoming he was only 14 years old and the prevalent theory was that his killer mistook him for his father kel's nickel the elder nichol was a sheep farmer who had proven to be troublesome for the local cattle ranchers and the idea that he was the intended target was given credence just a few weeks later when he was also shot although he survived the injury tom horn came under the suspicion of joe lefors a former lawman and pinkerton who was aware of horn's reputation as a killer for hire he also knew that horn had been accused before and managed to walk away a free man so on this occasion he came up with a plan to get the gunman to incriminate himself first he forwarded horn some genuine letters from a rancher in montana who was looking for a stock detective this way he made him think that their meeting was simply a job interview borjorn didn't know was that lefors had hidden two people in the adjacent office one was a witness and the other was a stenographer who was writing down everything the cowboys said during a few hours of talking and drinking lefour's got horn to incriminate himself regarding the murder of willy nickel allegedly saying that it was the best shot that he ever made and the dirtiest trick he ever done unsurprisingly tom horne was later arrested for the crime and his trial began in november of 1902. there was little actual evidence against him other than his semi-confession even that his defense argued was nothing but drunken boasting from a man trying to impress his prospective employer they also pointed out the fact that nobody else had been investigated with a crime and once again horn had witnesses willing to provide him with an alibi whether or not tom horne was actually guilty of this particular crime remains arguably the most controversial aspect of his life both historians and wild west enthusiasts have argued in his defense claiming that horne was found guilty on his reputation alone but he was found guilty and he was sentenced to hang the execution was scheduled for the 20th of november 1903. there was a growing rumor that a posse had devised a plan to bust horn out of jails so the sheriff beefed up security in the days prior stationing armed guards all around the jail and the courthouse and even mounting a gatling gun on the roof no such attempt was ever made horn was executed using a new contraption called the julian gallows which was water operated and did not require a hangman to pull the lever a denver reporter was an eyewitness and described the scene as such proctor adjusted the noose formed with the conventional knot of 13 wraps to horn's neck drew a black hood over his head instantly the sibilant sound of running water permeated the breathless stillness the instrument of death had begun to operate to the straining ears of the listeners that little sound had the magnitude of that of a rushing torrent then mercifully the leaves of the trap parted with a crash and horn's body hung through the opening 31 seconds had elapsed since he had been lifted onto the trap he only fell four and one half feet his head and shoulders projected above the gallows floor this drop was not sufficient his neck was not broken the slam of the massive hangman's knot against the side of horn's skull knocked him into unconsciousness however and he did not suffer for 17 minutes the physicians with a finger on his pulse felt impulses as a mighty heart labored on then the pulse ceased tom horn was dead unconfessed so i really hope you enjoyed today's video thanks again to magic spoon for sponsoring it one of the quick plug here at the end if you don't mind if you like this era of history we actually did a video pretty recently on another documentary style channel that i host called explored xblrd that's how it's spelt looking at the problem with the bank robber bounty in america's old west it's pretty fascinating stuff so if that's something you think you might be interested in you can head over to explored again xplrd and find that video or any other video on that channel if you so fancy it thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Biographics

Views: 132,149

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: p2-QSLj1BQ4

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021