Hellish Fiends, and Brutish Men

James Butler’Wild Bill’ Hickok By unattributed – Heritage Auctions, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33582655

The following article was published in the Telegraph Courier of Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Thursday, 24 August 1876.

Trial and Acquittal of the Murderer of Wild Bill-a Characteristic Picture of Frontier Life-Colorado Charley Gives Wild Bill a Good send off-The Finest Funeral the Country Could Afford  

Yesterday afternoon,  about 4 o’clock, the people of this city (Deadwood City) were startled by the report of a pistol shot in the saloon kept by Messrs. Lewis & Mann. Your correspondent at once hastened to the spot and found J.B. Hickok, commonly known as Wild Bill, lying senseless upon the floor. He had been shot by a man known as Jack McCall.

A jury was convened, which decided that J.B. Hickok came to his death from a wound resulting from a shot fired from a pistol in the hands of Jack McCall.

A meeting was called during the evening at McDaniels’ theater, which was given up by Mr. Languishe for that purpose. Officers were elected to conduct the trial, which was set for 9 o’clock this morning. Three men were also selected, one to go up Whitewood, another up Deadwood, and the third down Whitewood, early this morning, for the purpose of informing the miners of the trial. At the time appointed, the prisoner was led into the theater by the guard, and in charge of Joseph Brown, who had been elected sheriff, and placed upon the stage beside the table at which was seated Judge Kuykendall and other officers of the court.

The judge called the meeting to order, and, in a neat address, asked the people to sustain him in the discharge of duties which devolved upon him in the unenviable position which they had forced him to accept.

A hundred names were selected, each written upon a slip of paper and placed in a hat, by which they were taken by one of the committee, who had been selected to draw the jurors. Nearly all the list was exhausted before the jury was declared full.

The first witness called was Charles Rich, who said he was in the saloon kept by Lewis & Mann on the afternoon of the 2d, and he was seated at a table playing a game of poker with Wild Bill and several others, when the prisoner, whom he identified, came into the room, walking deliberately up to Wild Bill, placed a pistol to the back of the deceased, and fired, saying: “Take that!” Bill fell from the stool upon which he had been seated without uttering a word.

A number of other witnesses were examined, all of whom corroborated the evidence of Rich.

The prisoner was called upon to make a statement. He came down from the stage into the auditorium of the theater, and, with his right hand in the bosom of his shirt, his head thrown back, in a harsh, loud, and repulsive voice, with a bull-dog sort of bravado, said: “Well, men, I have but few words to say. Wild Bill killed my brother, and I killed him. Wild Bill threatened to kill me if I crossed his path. I am not sorry for what I have done. I would do the same thing over again.” The prisoner then returned to his place on the stage.

The case having been placed in the hands of the jury, the theater was cleared, with the understanding that the verdict should be made known in the saloon where the murder was committed. The prisoner was remanded to the house where he had been imprisoned during the night. At 9 o’clock, the following verdict was read to the prisoner:

DEADWOOD CITY, Aug.3, 1876.-We, the jurors, find the prisoner, Mr. John McCall, not guilty.  CHARLES WHITEHEAD, Foreman.  

                                                    Jack McCall

Jack McCall had not been in Deadwood long when he placed the muzzle of his pistol to the back of Wild Bill Hickok’s head and pulled the trigger, blasting the former lawman, soldier, scout and actor into oblivion.

The gunshot that reverberated through Lewis & Mann’s saloon on 1 August 1876 sent the unprepossessing figure of Jack McCall into infamy. McCall was born near Jeffersontown, Kentucky, in the early 1850s. He left his home state sometime around 1869; he spent time in the buffalo camps on the Plains, apparently earning the nickname ‘Buffalo Curly’.

In 1875, McCall was found in Wyoming, where he was using the alias Bill Sutherland. Continuing his peripatetic lifestyle, he arrived in Deadwood the following year, probably not long before he assassinated Hickok.

Warned to leave Deadwood in the aftermath of his acquittal, he drifted back to Wyoming. It was at Laramie on 29 August that he was once more arrested. He was transported to Yankton, South Dakota, to stand trial for the killing of Hickok, the first trial having been ruled illegal because Deadwood was not a legally constituted community and local acts of justice were not recognised by law.

McCall was thwarted in his attempt to escape from jail on 9 November. His second trial, presided over by Judge P.C. Shannon, took place in early December 1876. Memorably described by the Abilene (Kansas) Weekly Chronicle as ‘a Bother Brigand of the Mountains’, McCall was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged until he was dead, dead, dead. 

While he was languishing in his cell, McCall was handed a letter sent from Louisville, Kentucky. It was addressed to the Sheriff of Yankton, and the missive informed the recipient that the writer, Mary A. McCall, had learned the identity of the killer of Wild Bill Hickok in the morning newspaper. She informed the sheriff that she, her parents and siblings had not seen their relative John McCall for six years. The description she included of her brother,  ‘twenty-five years old. Light hair, inclined, and one eye crossed. I cannot say about his height, as he was not grown when he left here,’ whichmatched the newspaper reports after the first trial. Mary McCall begged the sheriff to write with information. John McCall is believed to have spent the night before his execution writing letters to his relatives left behind in Kentucky.

The morning of Thursday, 1 March 1877, was cold and drizzly. At 9 a.m, Marshall Burdick of Yankton, surrounded by his deputies, read the death warrant, John McCall ‘listened attentively’.  Inside the Yankton jail, ‘an air of gloom pervaded…Allen and McCarty ( McCall’s fellow prisoners) hug their heads in silence.’

After Burdick had read the death warrant, the condemned man had returned briefly to the jail, where he had conversed privately with ‘his spiritual adviser.’

McCall said goodbye to his fellow prisoners and left the jail for the last time. McCall was transported by carriage, ‘followed by a long line of vehicles of every description, with hundreds on horseback and on foot, all leading north…The rain which was had moistened the earth and deadened the sound of the carriage wheels. Not a word was spoken during the ride of two miles to the school section north of the Catholic cemetery.’ The Abilene Weekly Chronicle described the crowd which accompanied McCall to the place of execution as: ‘a motley one, comprising lawyers, doctors of medicine, and of divinity, reporters, ragged boys…Americans, Russians, and every other nationality, the grave and the gay, and, in fact, exactly the materials of which Yankton is composed.’ 

McCall remained stoical as he viewed the scaffold. He mounted the platform, turned to the marshal, and asked for a moment to pray, which Burdick consented to.

At exactly 10 a.m., the noose was placed around McCall’s neck. ’Tie the rope tight, boys;’  he urged the officials, ‘don’t let there be any mistakes.’ The trap was sprung, and the killer of Wild Bill Hickok fell through with a cry of ‘Oh God!’ 

McCall’s corpse was cut down after twenty-five minutes, placed in a casket, and buried in the Catholic cemetery.   

© Mark Young 2026

Sources

The Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography Volume II By Don L. Thrapp.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-abilene-weekly-chronicle-bother-brig/198927956

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-telegraph-courier-life-in-the-black/182436319

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-canton-advocate-hanging-jack-mccall/198927674