John Peters Ringo (May 3, 1850 – July 13, 1882) was an American Old West outlaw loosely associated with the Cochise County Cowboys in frontier boomtown Tombstone, Arizona Territory. He took part in the Mason County War in Texas during which he committed his first murder. He was arrested and charged with murder. He was affiliated with Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton, and Frank Stilwell during 1881–1882. He got into a confrontation in Tombstone with Doc Holliday and was suspected by Wyatt Earp of having taken part in the attempted murder of Virgil Earp and the ambush and death of Morgan Earp. Ringo was found dead with a bullet wound to his temple which was ruled suicide. Modern writers have advanced various theories attributing his death to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Frank Leslie or Michael O'Rourke.

Early life

Johnny Ringo, son of Martin and Mary Peters Ringo, had distant Dutch ancestry, and was born in what later became the small town of Greens Fork, Clay Township, Wayne County, Indiana. His family moved to Liberty, Missouri, in 1856. He was a tangentially-related cousin to the Younger brothers through his aunt Augusta Peters Inskip, who married Coleman P. Younger, uncle of the outlaws.

In 1858, his family moved from Liberty to Gallatin, where they rented property from the father of John W. Sheets, who became the first "official" victim of the James–Younger Gang when they robbed the Daviess County Savings & Loan Association in 1869.

Mason County War

Ringo left his mother, brother, and sisters in San Jose, California, in 1869 and moved to Mason County, Texas. He befriended an ex-Texas Ranger Scott Cooley who was the adopted son of rancher Tim Williamson.

Trouble started when two American rustlers, Elijah and Pete Backus, were dragged from the Mason jail and lynched by a predominantly German mob. Full-blown war began on May 13, 1875, when Tim Williamson was arrested by a hostile posse and murdered by a German farmer named Peter "Bad Man" Bader. Cooley and his friends, including Johnny Ringo, conducted a terror campaign against their rivals. Officials called it the "Mason County War"; locally it was called the "Hoodoo War". Cooley retaliated by killing local German ex-deputy sheriff John Worley, then taking his scalp and tossing his body down a well on August 10, 1875.

Cooley already had a reputation as a dangerous man and was respected as a Texas Ranger. He killed several others during the "war". After Cooley supporter Moses Baird was killed, Ringo murdered James Cheyney on September 25, 1875, with a friend named Bill Williams. They rode up to Cheyney's house. Cheyney (who had led Baird into the ambush) greeted them unarmed, invited them in, and began washing his face on the porch. Both Ringo and Williams shot and killed him. The two then rode to the house of Dave Doole and called him outside, but he came out with a gun and they fled back into town.

Some time later, Scott Cooley and Johnny Ringo mistook Charley Bader for his brother Pete and killed him. Both men were jailed in Burnet, Texas by Sheriff A. J. Strickland, but Ringo and Cooley soon broke out of jail with the help of their friends and they parted company to evade the law.

The Mason County War ended in about November 1876 after about a dozen individuals had been killed. Scott Cooley was thought to be dead and Johnny Ringo and his friend George Gladden were in jail. One of Ringo's alleged cellmates was the notorious killer John Wesley Hardin. He described himself as a "speculator" in the 1882 Cochise County Great Register.

Confrontation with Doc Holliday

On January 17, 1882, Ringo and Doc Holliday traded threats and seemed headed for a gunfight. Both men were arrested by Tombstone's chief of police, James Flynn, and hauled before a judge for carrying weapons in town. Both were fined. Judge William H. Stilwell followed up on charges outstanding against Ringo for a robbery in Galeyville and Ringo was re-arrested and jailed on January 20 for the weekend. Ringo was suspected by the Earps of taking part in the December 28, 1881, ambush of Virgil Earp, that crippled him for life, and the March 18, 1882, murder of Morgan Earp while he was shooting pool in a Tombstone saloon.

Joins posse pursuing Earps

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 vendetta to find and kill the others they held responsible for ambushing Virgil and Morgan. Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan received warrants from a Tucson judge for arrest of the Earps and Holliday. He deputized Ringo and 19 other men, many of them friends of Stilwell and the Cochise County Cowboys.

The local posse pursued and came close to the federal posse at Henry C. Hooker's ranch, but never faced the Earp lawmen. Former Pima County Sheriff Bob Paul, who had been in Tombstone at the time and volunteered to ride with the Behan posse, wrote a letter to the Tucson Citizen on March 3, 1898 in response to an earlier story he said was full of errors. He said the Earp posse had told Hooker to tell Behan and his posse where they were camped. Hooker told Behan where the Earps were camped but the posse left in the opposite direction.

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's report noted that "He had evidently traveled but a short distance in this foot gear." 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 ear. His revolver was still in his right hand.

According to the coroner's report, Ringo's Colt Single Action Army .45 revolver held five cartridges. 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 away with Ringo's boots still tied to the saddle. A coroner's inquest officially ruled his death a suicide.

Ringo's body is buried near the base of the tree where it was discovered. The grave is located on private land. A gate on a nearby road permits visitors to view the site. alternative theories of doubtful plausibility about Ringo's death have been proposed over the years. Some assert that the lack of powder burns on his head suggest he was shot from a distance. The coroner's jury report does not mention the presence or absence of powder burns. Furthermore, Ringo's body was already turning black due to decomposition.

Tombstone historian Ben T. Traywick thought the story about Earp's involvement was credible, reasoning that only Earp had sufficient motive to kill Ringo, he was probably in the area at the time, and near the end of his life Earp told one historian "in circumstantial detail how he killed John Ringo". Earp was interviewed in 1888 by an agent of California historian Hubert H. Bancroft, and in 1932, Frank Lockwood, who authored Pioneer Days in Arizona, wrote that Earp told both of them that he killed Ringo as he left Arizona in March 1882 – almost four months before Ringo died. He included other details that do not match what is known about Ringo's death. Earp repeated his story to at least three other people. In an interview with a reporter in Denver in 1896, Earp denied that he had killed Ringo; but later, privately, claimed once again that he had.

Doc Holliday story

The Holliday theory is similar to the Earp theory, except that Holliday is alleged to have killed Ringo. A variant, popularized in the movie Tombstone, asserts that Holliday stepped in for Earp in response to a gunfight challenge from Ringo and shot him. There was still an arrest warrant outstanding on Holliday in Arizona for his part in Frank Stilwell's murder, making it unlikely that he would have entered Arizona at that time.

The last documented sighting of O'Rourke was in the Dragoon Mountains near Tombstone during May 1881, "well-mounted and equipped", and presumably on his way out of the territory. From then on he is referred to only in unsubstantiated rumors and legends; according to one, a combination of the debt he owed Earp and the grudge he held against Ringo prompted him to return to Arizona in 1882, track Ringo down, and kill him. While some sources consider the story plausible, others point out that O'Rourke, like Holliday, would have been reluctant to re-enter Arizona with a murder warrant hanging over his head, particularly to commit another murder.

Frank Leslie claim

While in the Yuma Territorial Prison for killing his wife, Buckskin Frank Leslie reputedly confessed to a guard that he had killed Ringo.

Film and television

The character of Johnny Ringo has been depicted in the following film and television shows:

  • The Gunfighter (1950) depicts Jimmy Ringo, a fictional depiction of Johnny Ringo's life
  • City of Bad Men (1953) played by Richard Boone
  • The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp includes two episodes depicting Ringo. John Pickard played the role in 1957; Peter M. Thompson in 1959.
  • '"The Johnny Ringo Story" (March 17, 1958), an episode of Tales of Wells Fargo portrayed by Paul Richards
  • Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), portrayed by John Ireland
  • "Johnny Ringo's Last Ride" (1958), an episode of the ABC series Tombstone Territory, starring Myron Healey
  • Johnny Ringo, starring Don Durant, aired for one season (1959–1960) on CBS. It depicted virtually nothing about Ringo's actual life.
  • "The Melancholy Gun" (1963), an episode of the syndicated television anthology series Death Valley Days. Portrayed by Ken Scott.
  • Ringo and His Golden Pistol, a Sergio Corbucci Spaghetti Western featuring a character called Johnny Ringo in the English dubbed version, though there is no reference to any real-life deeds or companions of the historical Ringo, and he is depicted as being of Mexican ancestry
  • The High Chaparral (1969) included two appearances of Ringo, portrayed first by Robert Viharo and then by Luke Askew.
  • The Gunfighters (1966), the eighth serial of the third season of Doctor Who, portrayed by Laurence Payne. Strangely, Ringo is depicted as one of the cowboys killed in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
  • Tombstone (1993), played by Michael Biehn
  • Wyatt Earp (1994), played by Norman Howell

In music

  • "Johnny Ringo" is a song on Crown the Empire's Limitless EP. Also, the songs "Johnny's Revenge" and "Johnny's Rebellion" are part of this trilogy.
  • "Ringo" (1964), a number-one hit for Lorne Greene.

In literature

Confessions of Johnny Ringo, a fictionalized memoir. Ringo is depicted as a bookish and introspective observer of his era whose sweetheart is killed by Union troops during the Civil War. He is driven to become an outlaw until he is killed by Wyatt Earp.

References

Further reading

  • Boessenecker, John (2020). Ride the Devil's Herd: Wyatt Earp's Epic Battle Against the West's Biggest Outlaw Gang. New York: Hanover Square Press.
  • (TV series 1959 – 1960)
  • The most complete biographical info available on the web.
  • This site has a photo of Ringo, gives a valuable timeline for Ringo's life, and directions for finding Ringo's grave.
  • This is a second link to the gravesite.
  • David Leighton, "Street Smarts: Notorious bad guy died lonely and alone," Arizona Daily Star, April 4, 2016