Murder & Mob Law in the Big Horn Basin Part 2: Dark fixations and family calamities

In our last trip into Wyoming history, we left the banks of the Big Horn River on a late-summer day in 1901, where J. P. Walters confronted the recently widowed Agnes Hoover near the Thermopolis Hot Springs. Twice he had asked her to marry him, and twice she refused. He warned that if she would not be his wife, they would “die together.” Still holding her son Alfred’s hand, Agnes faced him as Walters drew a revolver and fired at point-blank range. She fell instantly. Walters then turned the gun on himself, but the shot only grazed his scalp. Little Alfred escaped injury and was swiftly brought into the care of his older sister.

Several people rushed in and subdued Walters as he tried to cut his own throat. Dr. Hale was summoned but could do nothing for Agnes. While tending to Walters, the doctor reportedly punched him once, knocking him unconscious. Other citizens had to step in to keep an angry crowd from lynching Walters on the spot.

Because the killing occurred on the Big Horn County side of the river, Sheriff A. S. Garland had to ride the 70 miles from Basin to reach the scene, arriving two days after the murder. Walters, injured but not seriously, was taken to the new county jail in Basin. Within days, Agnes was buried beside her husband, John, who had died just eight months earlier. The town of Otto rallied behind the children, and soon Stella was running the store and caring for her young brothers.

At first justice moved quickly. Within a month the trial was complete, and a date was set to hang Mr. Walters. The people of Otto and Big Horn County were ready to have justice served and even looked forward to a public hanging.

But then the legal process ground to a crawl when Walters hired a big city lawyer who petitioned the Wyoming Supreme Court to stay the execution until a plea of insanity brought on by love could be evaluated. All of this left Walters languishing in jail, and the citizens grew angry as a new and more violent drama unfolded.

Brutal bloodshed near Ten Sleep 

Tom and Maggie Gorman and their two-year-old daughter, Rose, were living west of Ten Sleep on Broken Back Creek and had become successful enough in the cattle business to write to Tom’s younger brother, Jim, inviting him to come help on the ranch. The Gorman brothers had grown up in New York, and Tom had left years earlier to chase his dreams out West. Now he was offering his younger brother, 10 years his junior, a share in that success.

According to Maggie’s later testimony, the good intentions did not last long. Within a few months of Jim’s arrival, the brothers had begun quarreling. At first the arguments were over small, forgettable things, but the tension grew when Tom noticed the looks passing between his wife and younger brother. When the confrontations turned violent,  Maggie said Tom eventually threatened to kill Jim if he did not leave the ranch for good.

Jim packed up and left to try his luck elsewhere in Wyoming while Tom, Maggie and little Rose carried on with ranch work. Before long, though, neighbors began noticing that Jim had returned. Maggie explained that the brothers had made peace and that everything at the ranch was back to normal. Weeks turned into months, and soon the talk around Ten Sleep spread that nobody had seen Tom for some time. Maggie reassured anyone who asked that Tom had traveled to Canada to look at some property.

Suspicion deepened when Maggie began selling off household items and their wagon disappeared. The townspeople, no longer willing to rely on Maggie’s answers, organized a search of the ranch. It took only a few hours before they found what they feared: a shallow grave containing the chopped-up and partially burned body of 32-year-old Tom Gorman.

A posse was quickly organized, and before long Maggie and Jim were located near Cody. News stories across the state reported mourning over the presumed death of little Rose Gorman and claimed she had drowned in the Big Horn River. But as the Cody Wyoming Dispatch soon clarified, these initial stories were the hurried work of newsmen racing to sell papers. The Dispatch corrected the record, noting that the report was “erroneous as the child is here in Basin with its mother and was with her when she was arrested,” adding that Maggie “watches over her with all the loving tenderness that a parent could possibly do under the circumstances.” Far from being lost to the river, Rose was alive, safe and beside her mother.

Meanwhile, J. P. Walters, still awaiting an insanity trial for the killing of Agnes Hoover, remained in a cell at the Basin jail, with James Gorman held in another. After the county prosecutor met privately with Mrs. Gorman, she was no longer viewed as a participant in the crime but rather as a victim. She and little Rose were permitted to stay at a local boarding house until the trial.  

Two prisoners held for two violent deaths in less than five months, had suddenly made Big Horn County the talk of the state. It was precisely the sort of reputation the young county did not want, especially as Buffalo Bill Cody was working furiously to attract settlers, investors and rail connections to his new town on the Shoshone River. Lawlessness was not part of the sales pitch.

Worse than Bill Cody’s frustration was the anger brewing among the cattlemen who had known and respected Tom Gorman. Rumors were flying around the state that the ranchers intended to attack the jail and lynch James Gorman. Slow justice was not something they were used to, and many had no intention of letting the courts decide the fate of the man they believed responsible for his death.

Caught in the middle was Sheriff Garland who now faced a grim choice: uphold the law and protect the prisoners accused of brutal murder, or step aside and risk an eruption of frontier justice. To do his duty, Garland would have to risk his own life to save the very people who had taken the lives of others. His next decisions would determine whether Big Horn County held to the rule of law or descended into mob violence.

Additional historic notes:

• The Shoshone River was called The Stinking Water River until 1901. 

• Cody, Wyoming was officially incorporated as a city in 1901.

• Stella Hoover eventually married, sold the family store, went on to have three children, and died in Los Angeles in 1947.

• Frederick fought in World War I and came home a war hero, he married and lived until 1970.

• Alfred, who witnessed his mother’s death, never married and was exempted from military service. He lived his entire life near his sister and died just a few months after Stella.