Short Stuff: Johnny Ringo

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Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff, Josh, Chuck, Jerry, Infra-day. And we are quick on the draw. You're on short stuff. Pew, pew.

That's not lasers though. You can draw a laser S console though. OK, good point. But not in the old West unless it's Westworld, I guess. Because we're talking about the old West,

and we're talking about a lesser-known old West Gunslinger by the name of Johnny Ringo. Yeah, not Johnny Angel. Johnny Ringo, although you can substitute his name for that for Johnny Angel in the song,

if you sing it in your head. I bet you could. He was, at the time, very well-known. He was an outlaw. He was one of those cowboys.

He was the hired gun. He was a mercenary, which I guess is a hired gun. He also ran gangs that were known to murder and that kind of stuff. But he wasn't like a bank robber. He wasn't the train robber, even.

He just seems to have been a guy who just kind of made his way from town to town and ended up in kind of famous situations and did nefarious things here there, just enough to make a name for himself. Yeah, he was born in May, 1850, and what is now

green spork in Indiana, shout out to green sporks. And eventually he got tangled up, like you said, he could sort of found himself getting tangled up with various more famous people. That included early on the younger brothers

who were led by Jesse James and Frank James, the bank robbing group. But he had a pretty awful incident happen to him that when he was a teenager, that seemed like it really

“kind of shaped the rest of his life and how could it not?”

Absolutely, his parents and his brothers and sister were all on the trail to move from Missouri to California. And part way through, Martin Ringo was-- I'm not sure what he was doing with his rifle or shotgun, I saw both, but it went off when it happened

to be pointing up at his head from his chin. And he died instantly, obviously, in a very gruesome way, right in front of Johnny.

And you can basically explain the rest

of Johnny Ringo's life from that incident. Because it does matter as 1850, 1050, 2050. If his son sees his dad die in that manner, that's going to shape your life pretty much single-handedly. Yeah, for sure.

He was obviously traumatized. They had to-- there were moving, like you said, to California. So they just had to kind of keep going. They buried him along the road, kept that wagon train going. And by that age, he was a pretty good shot himself.

He was pretty good with a quick draw, good with a rifle. They landed in San Jose. His mom and his brothers and sisters. And he was there until about 1870, when he moved to Mason County, Texas,

where he kind of fell in with a bad gang of cattle wrestlers. Yeah, it almost seems like-- so he's 20, then.

It seems like he just basically moved to Texas

to look for trouble. And he found it very quickly. There is a Texas Ranger-- well, a former Texas Ranger turned out law named Scott Kooley. And they just kind of hit it off pretty quickly.

They became friends. And this is where Johnny Ringo really kind of started to become known as an outlaw gunslinger. Yeah, for sure, because Mason County-- you know, if you've ever seen the three Amigos had Germans in it,

and you kind of don't really think about the old West, having like, you know, British people and German people. But they did. In fact, Mason County was mainly colonized

And the tensions between them were pretty rough between those groups.

“They were often accusing one another of stealing their stock”

and taking their cows and wrestling horses. And then in 1875, it really sort of launched when a couple of the Brits, including a guy named Tim Williamson, were pulled out of jail by these Germans and killed in retaliation for a cattle theft.

Yeah, and they were being transported by a deputy sheriff named John Wardley. And these Germans assumed Germans who killed Tim Williamson and took some other guys and hung them and shot them. Scott Cooley, who was friends with Tim Williamson

and some of the other guys, he assumed that John Wardley

had allowed this to happen, that he was basically in on it.

So this kicked off what became known as the Mason County War or the Who Do War. And the first victim in this war after Williamson was John Wardley, who was killed by Scott Cooley. You're not only killed them, but scalloped him

on August 10th, 1875.

“That feels like maybe a time for a break?”

I think so. All right, we'll be right back with more on Johnny Ringo, right after this. (upbeat music) In 2023, a story gripped the UK,

evoking horror and disbelief. - A nurse who should have been in charge of caring

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on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - I'm Clayton Nackard, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. - Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan.

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- I am done nothing to get pregnant by the f*** bachelor. - Listen to Love Trapped on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - Alright, so when we left you the Hudu War had kicked off,

the John Warley had been killed and scout. This was 1875, and Ringo was a part of this war, and you know, it seems like he was sort of, just a side man supporting his buddy, Kooley, and whatever he wanted.

He was friends with the guys in his gang, he was part of the gang essentially. And when a guy named Moses Beard, who was a part of the gang, was Killed in that Hudu War about a month later in September of that year,

Ringo went on the attack big time, shot two of the guys that he suspected was involved in the murder, a guy named Dave Dool and another guy named James Cheney, went to their houses and shot him, and he actually went to jail for this one,

but because it was the old West, he escaped not too long after. - Right, so I mean, like he's really starting to build on his legend as the black hat outlaw, right? He spends the next few years moving around, looking for new cattle wars, new Mexico, Arizona, Texas.

He was known to do things like, he pissed a whip and then shot a man who he offered a drink to

He murdered another man that he saw her asking a woman,

“robbed a poker game that he had just left”

because the players wouldn't loan him any money, so he could stay in and keep playing. But his, I guess if anybody has heard of Johnny Ringo, it's because of he crossed paths, this is association with the guys from the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona,

Doc Holiday and Wyatt are in Virgilard. Can't forget Virgil. - Yeah, I mean, if you've seen the movie, Tombstone, you were probably yelling like guys, we've heard of Ringo, he was in the movie.

It was Michael Bean, right? - Yeah, John Conner's dead. - Yeah, that's right, so Ringo didn't like these guys, he didn't like holiday and herb, either herb. And eventually they did like a real old west,

sort of high noon, showdown in the middle of the town streets, and it was pistols were gonna be drawn for sure, but local constable came in, intervened and nothing happened at that point. But that was about a year before Johnny Ringo

would be found dead against a tree.

- Yeah, and I have never understood

what that, I'm your Huckleberry Mint, so I looked it up, do you know what it means? - I've never seen Tombstone, believe it or not all the way through. - I have neither, I just know that Val Kilmer says that.

- Yeah, that's a whole for me for sure. - He says I'm your Huckleberry, and I guess that was the old time you weigh it, the time was saying like I'm the man for the job, I can do this, and I guess he was saying,

I'm the man who can kill you, essentially, or take you down, or at least gunfight you. - Okay. - So at any rate, he didn't fight Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp. He wasn't there at the famous gunfight at the OK Carral,

apparently he was out of town that day, and I'm sure he was quite upset when he came back to town and found out what had happened, 'cause he definitely would have been on the side of the other guys.

And like you said, all that happened about a year before he was found dead, just outside of Tombstone, up against the tree. On July 14th, 1882, he had a single gunshot wound to his head and a cult of 45 revolver in his hand.

So it seemed like it was probably a pretty clear case of suicide. He'd been known to have been deep in the drink at the time, was very depressed, and he'd given an interview to the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper just before his death,

that he said that he was gonna be run down or kill at some point, and a local historian named Bob Bow's Bell, so that he certainly sounded down in the interview. So you could make a pretty good case that it was suicide. - Yeah, you know, other people say it was probably,

in the movie, at least it was Val Kilmer, it was Doc Holiday, and that historian, Bell was like, you know, everyone thought pretty much this was a suicide until that movie came out. There were of course whispers that it could have been

Holiday and Earp in the Gang, but it was really that movie that kind of solidified it in the minds of people, because, you know, it was a big Hollywood movie. - Yeah, but there's some problems with that one. Doc Holiday was almost certainly in Pueblo County, Colorado,

a few days before Ringo's death and after, because he had to appear in court, and he's on the record is having been there. It's a 1,500 mile trip in three days that I guess you could make, but that seems like

a lot of trouble to go out of your way

when Doc Holiday could have just killed him basically

at any time. And then why it hurt? He did claim credit for him, right? - Yeah, he for sure did, but this seems to be one

“of those things where, and I think this kind of happened”

a lot in the old West, where it was a badge of honor, and you could claim that you murdered someone when you didn't at all. And that seems like it had some pretty big holes, like the account of his killing wasn't,

it didn't line up with like how the body was found, and he also recanted later, and was like, you know, I didn't really kill that guy. - Yeah, and there was another piece of evidence that just kind of, at least it's circumstantial,

that was written later by Doc Holiday's Common Law wife, Big Knows Cake Cummings, and not only does it kind of support the idea that he died by suicide, it also really paints him as a tragic figure

if you'll indulge me, will you chuck? - Yes. So Cake Cummings Ringo was a fine man anyway, you look at him. Physically, intellectually, morally, he was six feet tall, rather slim and build,

although broad shoulder, medium fair as the complexion with gray blue eyes and light brown hair.

“Okay, so far so good, his face was somewhat long, okay?”

He was, what might be called an attractive man.

So she described him physically as basically handsome,

and then she says, his attitude toward all women was gentlemanly. He must have been a gentleman born. Sometimes I notice something wistful about him

and he would say, oh well, in size, then he would smile,

but his smiles were always sad.

“There was something in his life that only he himself knew about.”

He was always neat, clean, well-dressed, showed that he took good care of himself.

He never boasted of his deeds, good or bad,

the trade I have always liked and meant. John was a loyal friend and he was noble for he never fought anyone except face to face.

“Every time I think of him, my eyes filled with tears.”

Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a guy who was haunted

by seeing his father blow his head off by accident. Absolutely. And I think it says a lot that that was doc holiday, his sworn enemies, wife, who wrote that about him. Yeah, for sure.

So that's Johnny Ringo, kind of a murder mystery, but not necessarily, and anybody who sliced it, one of the unsung, outlawed bandits of the old West. And the threat. Chuck said that's right, which means short stuff is out.

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