Frank Stillwell
Born in Iowa, Frank Stillwell (1856 – 1882) ended up in Arizona in 1877, where he had his first recorded run in with the law: a new cook served him tea instead of coffee, and Stillwell shot him dead. In 1879, he staked a claim and worked a mine in Mojave, Arizona, when he got into a dispute with a fellow miner over claim-jumping. Stillwell settled the dispute by grabbing a rock and smashing in his rival’s face until he was dead. He was arrested for murder, but charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
He was hired as a Cochise County sheriff’s deputy in 1881, but was fired soon thereafter for “accounting irregularities”. A few months later, he robbed a stagecoach near Tombstone, Arizona, and was tracked down and arrested by lawmen Wyatt and Virgil Earp. Charges were dropped however for insufficient evidence, and after Stillwell produced alibi witnesses. The Earps, in their capacity as US Marshals, then charged Stillwell with the federal crime of interference with a mail carrier, which created a perception that Stillwell was being persecuted, and led soon thereafter to the assassination of Wyatt’s brother, Morgan Earp.
Witnesses reported seeing Stillwell fleeing from the scene, and a Coroner’s jury listed Stillwell among the suspects in the assassination. Wyatt Earp then formed a posse and went after the suspects in the murder of his brother Morgan and the earlier shooting of his other brother, Virgil. Two days after Morgan’s assassination, Wyatt Earp received information that Stillwell planned to murder his brother Virgil in Tucson when the train carrying him and Morgan’s coffin to California stopped there. Wyatt formed an escort to accompany Virgil, and on March 20, 1882, spotted Stillwell and two associates waiting in ambush near Tucson’s train station. Stillwell and his friends ran for their lives when they spotted Wyatt, but Stillwell stumbled. By the time he got back on his feet, Wyatt Earp was upon him.
“I ran straight for Stilwell,” he later recounted. “It was he who killed my brother. What a coward he was. He couldn’t shoot when I came near him. He stood there helpless and trembling for his life. As I rushed upon him he put out his hands and clutched at my shotgun. I let go both barrels, and he tumbled down dead and mangled at my feet.”