On July 14, 1882, Wild West outlaw Johnny Ringo was found dead, apparently caused by a self-inflicted gunshot, in Turkey Creek Canyon, Arizona.

John Peters Ringo, known as Johnny Ringo, was an American Old West outlaw associated with the Cochise County Cowboys in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. He participated in the Mason County War in Texas, where he committed his first murder. He was arrested and charged with murder. He was connected to Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, Frank Stilwell, and Ike Clanton during 1881-1882. He got into a disagreement with Doc Holliday in Tombstone and was suspected by Wyatt Earp of having had a part in the attempted murder of Virgil Earp and the death of Morgan Earp. Ringo was found deceased with a bullet wound in his head, officially ruled a suicide. Historians have advanced several theories assigning his death to Wyatt Earp, Frank Leslie, Doc Holliday, or Michael O’Rourke.

(Image: The only known photograph of Johnny Ringo, 1880. Wikimedia Commons.)

Often referred to as the “famous gun-fighting gentleman,” romanticized in both life and death, Johnny Ringo was allegedly a Shakespeare- reciting gentleman whose intellect was as quick as his gun. Some felt he was university educated, and his sense of courage and honor was often likened to that of a British lord. In reality, Ringo was not educated and emanated from a working-class Indiana family that struggled mightily. Yet, he seems to have been better read than most of his associates and exuded an image of a refined gentleman.

Johnny Ringo, son of Martin and Mary Peters Ringo, was born in 1850 in Green Forks, Indiana. His family then moved to Liberty, Missouri, in the year 1856. He was an indirectly related cousin to the Younger brothers through his aunt Augusta Peters Inskip, who married Coleman Younger, an uncle of the Younger outlaws. In 1858, Ringo’s family moved from Liberty to Gallatin.

Five years after his father’s murder in 1864, Ringo placed his mother, brother, and sisters in San Jose, California, for safekeeping. He then moved to Mason County, Texas. He became friends with an ex-Texas Ranger, Scott Cooley.

Trouble began when two cattle rustlers, Elijah and Pete Backus, were pulled from the Mason jail and lynched by a predominantly German mob. The full-scale war started on May 13, 1875, when Tim Williamson, Scott Cooley’s adoptive father, was arrested by an angry posse and murdered by Peter “Bad Man” Bader, a local German farmer. Cooley and several friends, including Johnny Ringo, operated a terror campaign against their new enemies. People began calling it the “Mason County War”; locally, it was referred to as the “Hoodoo War.” Cooley retaliated by murdering local German ex-deputy sheriff John Worley, then removing his scalp and disposing of his remains down a well on August 10, 1875.

Cooley was already known as an extremely dangerous man and was well-respected as a Texas Ranger. He killed several men during the Mason County War. After Cooley’s friend Moses Baird was killed, Ringo killed James Cheyney on September 25, 1875, with an accomplice named Bill Williams. They went to Cheyney’s house. Cheyney (who had lured Baird into the ambush that resulted in his death) foolishly greeted the two outlaws unarmed, invited them in, and then began washing his face on the porch. Both Ringo and Williams shot and killed the man. The two then went to the house of Dave Doole and called him outside, but he came out with a gun, and the two outlaws took off back into town.

Later, Scott Cooley and Johnny Ringo mistook Charley Bader for his brother Pete and murdered him. Both men were subsequently incarcerated in Burnet, Texas, but Ringo and Cooley managed to escape from jail with the help of some friends, and they separated in order to dodge the law.

The Mason County War ended in November 1876 after more than a dozen people had been killed. Scott Cooley was believed to be dead, and Johnny Ringo and his friend George Gladden were in jail. One of Ringo’s supposed cellmates at this time was the infamous killer John Wesley Hardin. While Gladden was given a 99-year sentence, Ringo was acquitted and released. Within two years, Ringo was a lawman in Loyal Valley, Texas. Shortly after, he traveled to Arizona.

Ringo first appeared in Cochise County, Arizona, in 1879, with Joseph Graves Olney (alias “Joe Hill”), a friend from his time in the Mason County War. In December 1879, a drunk Ringo shot an unarmed Louis Hancock in a saloon in Safford, Arizona, because Hancock turned down a free whiskey from Ringo because he preferred the taste of beer. Hancock managed to survive the attack. After arriving in Tombstone, Arizona, he met editor Sam Purdy of The Tombstone Epitaph, who later related that “he said that he was as certain of being killed as he was of living then. He said that he might run along for a couple of years more and may not last two days.” In Tombstone, Ringo had a reputation for having a bad temper. He may have taken part in robberies and killings with the Cochise County Cowboys, a loose grouping of outlaws. He was occasionally wrongly referred to as “Ringgold” by local newspapers. He referred to himself as a “speculator” in the Cochise County Great Register.

On January 17, 1882, Ringo and Doc Holliday traded threats and seemed destined for a gunfight. Both men were arrested by Tombstone’s sheriff, James Flynn, and taken before a judge for possessing weapons inside town limits. Both were fined. Judge William Stilwell followed up on outstanding charges against Ringo for a robbery he committed in Galeyville, and Ringo was re-arrested and jailed for two days. The Earps suspected Ringo of taking part in the December 28, 1881, ambush of Virgil Earp that crippled him for life and for the March 18, 1882, murder of Morgan Earp while he was playing pool in a Tombstone saloon.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp and his posse killed Frank Stilwell in Tucson on March 20, 1882. After the shooting, the Earps and a federal posse set out on a crusade to find and exterminate those they deemed responsible for attacking the Earp brothers. Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan was given warrants from a Tucson judge for the arrest of Holliday and the Earps. He deputized Ringo and 19 other men, many of them friends of Stilwell and the Cochise County Cowboys.

During the Earp Vendetta Ride, Wyatt Earp killed one of Ringo’s closest friends, “Curly Bill” Brocius, in a gunfight at Iron Springs, about 20 miles from Tombstone. Earp told his biographer, Stuart Lake, that Florentino Cruz confessed to being the lookout at Morgan’s murder and identified Ringo, Stilwell, Swilling, and Brocius as Morgan’s killers, though historians distrust Earp’s story.

The local posse pursued and came close to the federal posse at Henry Hooker’s ranch but never faced the Earp lawmen. Former Pima County Sheriff Bob Paul, who had been in Tombstone at the time and decided to join the Behan posse, wrote a letter to the Tucson Citizen on March 3, 1898, in response to an earlier story he said was incorrect. He stated that the Earp posse had instructed Hooker to tell Behan and his posse where they were camped out. Hooker told Behan where the Earps were located, but the posse took an opposite route.

During Tombstone’s Fourth of July festivities, Ringo drank heavily. He left town two days later, taking several bottles of liquor with him for the ride. Deputy Billy Breakenridge saw him two days later near Dial’s Ranch in the South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains. He later wrote that “Ringo was very drunk, reeling in the saddle.” He encouraged Ringo to follow him back to the Goodrich Ranch, but “he was drunk and stubborn and went on his way. I think this was the last time he was seen alive.” At 3 pm on July 13, ranch hands at a nearby ranch heard a shot.

James Yoast was hauling wood when he found Ringo’s body on July 14 seated in “a bunch of five large blackjack oaks growing up in a semicircle from one root, and in the center of them was a large flat rock which made a comfortable seat.” He was “not more than 700 feet from Smith’s house” in West Turkey Creek Valley, near Chiricahua Peak in Arizona Territory. His body had already begun to turn black from the desert heat.

His feet were wrapped in strips of cloth torn from his undershirt. Ringo had lost his horse with his boots tied to the saddle. The coroner reported, “He had evidently traveled but a short distance in this footgear.” There was a bullet hole in his right temple and an exit wound at the back of his head. The fatal wound was upward at a 45-degree angle between the right eye and the ear. His revolver was still in his right hand.

According to the coroner, Ringo’s Colt Single Action Army .45 revolver held five cartridges; the hammer rested on the empty chamber. A knife cut was found at the base of his scalp, as if “someone had cut it with a knife.” His horse was found eleven days later, about 2 miles away, with Ringo’s boots still tied to the saddle. The coroner’s inquest officially ruled Ringo’s death a suicide.

Ringo’s body was interred at the base of the tree where it was found. The grave is located on private land. A gate on a nearby road permits visitors to view the site. Despite the coroner’s ruling and contemporary newspaper reports that Ringo had “frequently threatened to commit suicide and that the event was expected at any time,” several different theories of doubtful probability about Ringo’s death have been suggested over the years. Some assert that the lack of powder burns on his head suggests he was shot from a distance. The coroner’s jury report fails to mention the presence or absence of powder burns. Furthermore, Ringo’s body was already turning black due to heat and decomposition.

Robert Boller, a member of the coroner’s jury, wrote in 1934, “I showed [James Yoast] where the bullet had entered the tree on the left side. Blood and brains [were] oozing from the wound and matted his hair. The six-shooter had an empty shell, and the hammer was on that. I called it a suicide fifty-two years ago; I am still calling it a suicide. I guess I’m the last of the coroner’s jury.”

Upon hearing of his death, the Tombstone Epitaph published, “Many friends will mourn him. And many others will take secret delight in learning of his death.”

The way Ringo died remains somewhat of a mystery. He seems to have become depressed in 1882, possibly because his family had treated him frostily when he had visited them in San Lose months before. Witnesses reported that he had been drinking more heavily than usual. Despite the official ruling on Ringo’s death that he had committed suicide, some were certain that he had been murdered either by his friend Frank “Buckskin” Leslie or a young gambler named “Johnny-Behind-the Deuce.” In several interviews later in his life, Wyatt Earp took credit for Ringo’s death to make things even more complicated. However, it has been proven that Earp had already left Arizona and was in Colorado at the time of Ringo’s death. It has also been claimed that Doc Holliday killed him, which was shown in the blockbuster 1993 movie Tombstone. Most of the evidence, however, supports the initial conclusion that Ringo shot himself.

The reason for Ringo’s supposed suicide is a mystery but has been the subject of much conjecture. If he did take his own life, the reason for it will likely remain a secret. Today, his grave is a historic site.

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