It seems that, even in death, outlaws of the Wild West had trouble staying in one place.
From covert grave robberies to faked deaths, these are the fates of western legends' bodies.
According to the research done by retired Dakota Wesleyan University history professor
James D. Laird, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were not actually a couple,
as is often reported. McLaird explained to Wild West that in her autobiography,
Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane, even Jane herself said they were just friends.
Rumors of a romantic relationship were seemingly supported by what happened after Hickok's death.
As HBO's Deadwood demonstrated, Wild Bill was famously killed by a bullet
to the back while mid-card game, and the aces-and-eights hand that he allegedly
held at the time would become forever known as the Dead Man's Hand. Hickok was buried
in Deadwood's original cemetery, Ingleside, but that's not the place he's resting now.
"The man who kills Wild Bill will be very famous."
Deadwood historic preservation officer Kevin Kuchenbecker told the Mitchell
Republic that in 1879, three years after his initial burial, Hickok was exhumed
and reinterred in a new cemetery just outside Deadwood called Mount Moriah. A decade later,
his gravesite had become such a major tourist attraction that his tombstone was destroyed
by souvenir hunters in short order, to be replaced by a much sturdier statue.
Kuchenbecker says it was the tourism aspect that's at the heart of those
Calamity Jane rumors. When she died in 1903, she was buried beside Hickok. It
wasn't out of any romantic connection, though, as Kuchenbecker explained,
"Part of it was not only out of respect for a legend in her own time,
but if you put two legends side by side? It's a draw."
Dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc Holliday, a close associate of Wyatt Earp, died in bed
at the Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1887. That's just a hop, skip,
and a jump from the Linwood Cemetery, which is where history buffs can finish off their
Holliday retrospective with a visit to a memorial marker. Only, that's not where he's buried.
Holliday died penniless and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in the
cemetery's Potter's Field. That means there's no actual grave marker or tombstone, and since
it wasn't recorded exactly where he was buried, that's left the story ripe for rumors. In fact,
some say his final resting place wasn't in that cemetery at all.
Holliday was originally from Georgia, and there is a perfectly plausible belief
that he may actually have been returned to his home and buried alongside his father,
a wealthy landowner and politician. This theory suggests that although Holliday's later misdeeds,
many of which were depicted in the 1993 film Tombstone, estranged him from his
parents and made it impossible for them to maintain their Southern respectability by
burying him in their plot. To keep the family together, arrangements may have
been made to return Holliday's body to Georgia and bury him alongside his father in secret.
One curious fact that supports this theory is that Holliday's father doesn't have a tombstone,
either. This could mean that the two are buried side-by-side in an unmarked
location to keep his son's remains safe from gravediggers and souvenir hunters.
Western history buffs and Paul Newman fans alike could tell you that Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ultimately died in a shootout with Bolivian law enforcement. However,
this famous narrative has a huge caveat: The outlaws' bodies were
never actually identified by anyone who knew what they looked like in life. What's more,
no photos were taken of their corpses, and when they were buried in the San Vicente
cemetery, the locations were never marked publicly or recorded by law enforcement.
This big hole in the story has given rise to a theory
that Cassidy survived to reboot his life into something more law-abiding,
and actually wound up living to a ripe old age. Even his sister, Lula, backed this claim,
stating he died in Washington State and was buried in a secret location.
"He was still full of fun, and could tell a good joke."
In the 1990s, historians Daniel Buck and Anne Meadows found a man living in San
Vincente who said that his father had been the one to bury the two outlaws.
The story was passed down to him, and when the researchers finally tracked him down,
he questioned why investigators had waited so long to inquire about the legend.
He was able to direct them to the burial location, and when the grave was exhumed, there were,
in fact, two men buried there. However, according to DNA testing, the bodies did not belong to Butch
or Sundance. For now, rumors of the true location of the iconic duo's remains continue to thrive.
Geronimo surrendered to American military forces in 1886, and, as a prisoner of war,
was moved to Oklahoma's Fort Sill in 1894. He died from pneumonia in 1909,
where he'd been a prisoner for an astonishing 23 years.
A section of Fort Sill was set aside as an Apache cemetery, and that's where
Geronimo was laid to rest. However, this decision was highly controversial, for,
as The Oklahoman reported back in 1982, Geronimo had clearly stated he wished to return to Arizona
before his passing. For this reason, there was much debate about whether his remains should stay
in Fort Sill or be transferred further west. Some Apache also weighed in on the debate, insisting he
needed to remain where he was to honor tribal customs by leaving his grave undisturbed.
Unfortunately, Geronimo may have already been exhumed by another party. In 2009,
Geronimo's heirs were sued Yale's Skull and Bones society over the claim that Prescott
Bush had led a group that desecrated Geronimo's grave and stole his skull,
several bones, and various artifacts. After their removal,
they were reportedly installed in a display in the headquarters of the Skull and Bones society.
"He stumbles across an incredible letter." "In it,
it said, 'We have Geronimo's skull, bones, and horse tack.'"
The plaintiffs discovered documents that seemed to support this legend. The
lawsuit asked that Skull and Bones either prove that this robbery had not happened,
or confirm that it did and return the bones to Geronimo's descendants. The lawsuit was dismissed,
as it was ruled that Geronimo's remains were too old to be protected by the cited laws.
John Wesley Hardin dropped dozens of bodies, killing his first man when he was 15 and
earning the nickname "Little Arkansas" from Wild Bill Hickok. The documentary
series Gunslingers dramatized the outlaw's nefarious deeds. After a murder conviction,
he went on to become an attorney and attempted to run for public office.
Fast forward to 1895, and in the midst of trying to set up his own law practice, he was shot
and killed by El Paso law enforcement. Hardin was a native of Bonham, Texas, but was buried
where he died. In 1996, his descendants tried to arrange to have him moved from El Paso to Nixon,
where he had lived while married to his first wife. According to an Associated Press report,
Hardin's family appeared at the cemetery to make the motion, but were stopped at the gates.
The entire matter ended up going to court. Hardin's great-grandson
summed up the family's position, saying,
"The memory of him is better served by people who knew what he was. He was a family man.
He was a victim of the times, and he was viewed by many, many people as a friend."
It didn't work, and Hardin remains in El Paso.
Portrayed in numerous films and TV shows since his passing, Billy the Kid has lived on as a
larger-than-life figure. Shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett, he was buried the day after he died,
and the gravesite on the ground of Fort Sumner is marked with three names. Billy the Kid might
be famous, but who are the other two people whose bones share his final resting place?
Thomas O'Folliard was Billy the Kid's right-hand man, and was killed in the same ambush. After
O'Folliard was shot in the chest, it took him about 45 minutes to die. Charlie Bowdre
was only sort of tangentially associated with Billy the Kid, and just happened to
be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Garrett rode into town. After Bowdre was shot,
he lay where he dropped for days before the burial of the three outlaws.
However, there's a questionable theory that the man Garrett shot wasn't Billy the Kid at all,
and according to Daniel A. Edwards, author of Billy the Kid: An Autobiography,
he actually lived to a ripe old age as Ollie "Brushy Bill" Roberts. If that's the case, he
actually died in Hico in 1950, and was buried in the Oakwood Cemetery outside of Hamilton, Texas.
Life in the Wild West didn't necessarily come with a promise of longevity, but when Wyatt Earp
died at the age of 81, his Los Angeles Times obituary ran with the headline, "Wyatt Earp,
Picturesque Gun-Fighting Marshal of Frontier Days, Passes Without Boots On." His days of
fighting cattle rustlers, outlaws, and gunslingers were far behind him,
and instead, he had spent the last three years of his life fighting kidney disease.
By the time of his death, he had been living as the husband of Josephine Sarah "Sadie"
Marcus for decades, even though no one has found evidence that they were ever officially married.
It makes sense, then, that his cremated remains are buried alongside hers in her family plot,
located in the Jewish area of the Hills of Eternity Cemetery.
Interestingly, in spite of the devotion the Earp brothers showed to each other in life,
none are buried in the same cemetery. Morgan — who was killed a few months after the notorious
O.K. Corral gunfight — was returned to his parents and buried in Colton, California's Hermosa Gardens
Cemetery. Virgil died of pneumonia in 1905 and was buried in Portland, Oregon, while James died
of natural causes in 1926, and was buried in San Bernardino's Mountain View Cemetery.
Sitting Bull had long been a voice of reason in the struggle against oppression,
and was shot and killed in 1890. After his death,
he was buried in a military-made coffin at Fort Yates, but that was, perhaps unsurprisingly,
not the end of the story. When the construction of a nearby dam made it likely that his final resting
place was going to be submerged beneath a lake, his descendants stepped forward.
Family requests to move Sitting Bull's remains from South Dakota
to North Dakota were rejected. Not to be deterred, a group walked into Fort Yates,
dug up the grave, then headed into North Dakota. Sitting Bull was
reinterred in a vault overlooking the Missouri River, or so the story goes.
In addition to other rumors that he was taken to Canada,
Fort Yates claims that the bones removed from their grounds weren't Sitting Bull's at
all. That claim shed uncertainty on his final resting place, but there's one more footnote.
In 2007, the Smithsonian returned a lock of Sitting Bull's hair to four siblings
who have long claimed to be the leader's great-grandchildren, and years later,
DNA testing done on the hair confirmed Ernie LaPointe was Sitting Bull's great-grandson.
With that indisputable legal proof, he told NBC that he was hoping to move Sitting Bull's
remains to a site he was connected to in life, and re-bury him with proper honors.
Western icon Jesse James was famously shot and killed by members of his own gang in exchange
for a pardon, and that's what they got — along with the reward money promised to anyone who
brought him to justice. James's mother, Zerelda, turned down a $10,000 offer from someone looking
to buy his remains, and instead had him returned to the James family home in Kearney, Missouri.
"Jesse James' death was the end of an era, really, for this kind of criminal."
James was buried there under a tombstone with an inscription stating that he was murdered by a,
quote, "traitor and coward whose name is not worthy to appear here."
He remained there for 20 years, until — amid worries over graverobbers — his family had him
disinterred, positively identified, and moved to the city's Mt. Olivet cemetery.
In spite of the fact that James' mother instructed the family members who oversaw
the moving of his remains to confirm to her that yes, it was still her son's body in the grave,
questions lingered. Fast forward to 1995, when researchers from George Washington University
exhumed the grave for DNA testing. As The New York Times reports, after comparing it to
known descendants, they confirmed that yes, it was still James in the grave.