Frank Stillwell built a reputation in the Arizona Territory that few frontier gunmen would have envied. He was involved in at least two fatal encounters between 1877 and 1882, both legally ruled self-defense at the time, and he was tied to stagecoach robberies and the killing of a lawman. Despite his violent record, Stillwell briefly wore a badge himself, serving about four months as a deputy sheriff in Tombstone under Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan. Born in Iowa around 1856, Stillwell moved with his family to Kansas territory as a child.
After his parents separated in 1863, he and his brothers went with their father, William, who later served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Frank’s older brother, Simpson “Comanche Jack” Stillwell, went on to a varied frontier career as a scout, deputy U. S. marshal, police judge, and U.
S. commissioner. Stillwell arrived in Arizona in 1877 and quickly found legal trouble. That October, an argument with a cook named Jesus Bega, reportedly over being served tea instead of coffee, ended with Bega fatally injured.
The court ruled that Stillwell had acted in self-defense. Two years later, in November 1879, a mining dispute with Colonel John Van Houten turned deadly; Stillwell and another man were arrested, but a grand jury declined to indict them due to insufficient evidence. By 1880, Stillwell was operating a livery business in Charleston, Arizona. In April 1881, Sheriff Johnny Behan appointed him assistant deputy sheriff, but Behan dismissed him by August over concerns about discrepancies in financial records.
Shortly afterward, Stillwell was arrested in connection with a robbery but was acquitted. On September 8, 1881, a stagecoach belonging to the Sandy Bob line was held up near Tombstone while en route to Bisbee. The masked robbers took about $2,500 from the strongbox. The driver reported hearing one of the men refer to the stolen money as “sugar,” a term associates of Stillwell’s were known to use.
At the scene, Wells Fargo undercover agent Fred Dodge found a distinctive bootprint with a widened, custom-repaired heel. The Earps traced the print to a Bisbee cobbler and concluded it matched one of Stillwell’s boots. Stillwell and his business partner Pete Spence were taken into custody and charged with the robbery. Judge Wells Spicer set bail at $7,000, which was paid by C.
H. Ham Light, a known associate. At the preliminary hearing, both men produced witnesses who claimed they were elsewhere at the time. The judge ruled the evidence too circumstantial and released them.
Two weeks later, on October 13, 1881, Deputy U. S. Marshal Virgil Earp brought new federal charges against Stillwell and Spence for obstructing a mail carrier during the same stagecoach incident. Virgil transported both men to Tucson, where they were held in the territorial jail.
While he was away, he deputized his brother Wyatt to serve temporarily as assistant city marshal in Tombstone. The arrests deepened tensions between the Earps and the cowboy faction. Members of the cowboy circle saw the charges as deliberate harassment and made it known that retaliation would follow. Threats circulated in Tombstone, and the Tombstone Epitaph reported that harm could come to the Earp brothers as a result of their law enforcement actions.
Newspapers also mistakenly reported that Stillwell and Spence had been arrested for a different holdup near Contention City, fueling the belief that the Earps were unfairly singling out certain men. On March 18, 1882, Morgan Earp was shot and killed in Tombstone. The day after his death, a coroner’s inquest heard testimony from Marietta Spence, wife of Pete Spence. She reported that her husband, along with Frank Stillwell, Florentino “Indian Charlie,” Frederick Bode, and another man, had returned to their residence about an hour after the shooting.
She also claimed her husband warned her not to speak about what she had seen. Other witnesses said they saw Stillwell fleeing the area near the time of the attack. The coroner’s jury named Spence, Stillwell, Bode, and Florentino as suspects, though no formal indictments were issued. Spence soon surrendered himself to authorities, apparently fearing retaliation.
Two days after Morgan’s death, on March 20, 1882, Deputy U. S. Marshal Wyatt Earp received word that Stillwell, Ike Clanton, and others were in Tucson, reportedly watching incoming passenger trains. The tip suggested they might intend to harm Virgil Earp, who was on his way to California to recover from an earlier ambush that had left him seriously wounded.
Wyatt gathered Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, and Sherman McMaster to escort Virgil and his wife Allie to the railhead in Benson, then rode with them to Tucson. When the group arrived at the Tucson depot, they spotted familiar faces on the platform. Virgil later told the San Francisco Examiner that Stillwell and a group of armed cowboys retreated into the crowd once they saw the Earps had protection. The party escorted Virgil and Allie to Porter’s Hotel for supper, then back to the train.
As the train departed, gunfire was reported near the tracks. Wyatt later said he saw Stillwell and a man he believed to be Ike Clanton lying low in a nearby flatcar, apparently armed with shotguns. When confronted, both men tried to flee. In an 1893 interview with the Denver Republican, Wyatt claimed Stillwell grabbed at the barrel of his shotgun, and Wyatt discharged both barrels.
Stillwell collapsed and died at the scene. Ike Clanton managed to escape. Clanton gave newspapers a different account. He claimed he and Stillwell were in Tucson to respond to federal charges related to the earlier Bisbee stage robbery.
He said they had heard rumors the Earps were arriving and believed they intended to confront Stillwell. Other reports said the two men had gone to the depot to meet a witness expected to testify before a grand jury. The following morning, Stillwell’s body was found beside the train tracks, several blocks from the depot. An examination by Dr.
Dexter Lloyd documented severe injuries: one rifle round had passed through both lungs; another had struck his upper left arm; a blast of buckshot had penetrated his abdomen; a second buckshot blast had fractured his left leg; and an additional rifle round had hit his right leg. Powder burns indicated a close-range shot. The coroner’s report concluded Stillwell had been struck by rounds from at least five different weapons, suggesting multiple people had fired during the incident. His revolver was still in its holster and had not been fired.
A local who viewed the scene remarked that Stillwell was “the worst shot up man I ever saw. ”
In a 1926 interview with his biographer, John H. Flood, Wyatt Earp recalled that Stillwell dropped his weapon and stumbled while trying to escape. Wyatt said he caught up to him near the tracks and fired at close range, and that Stillwell’s final words were “Morg, Morg,” likely a reference to his brother Morgan.
Wyatt consistently took responsibility for Stillwell’s death, but some accounts questioned whether he fired the fatal shot, since Doc Holliday was the only member of the group definitively known to have carried a shotgun at the time. Virgil Earp, in a March 1882 interview with the Arizona Daily Star, claimed that before dying, Stillwell admitted to being involved in Morgan’s killing and named others who had also played a role. Virgil added that his brothers had received warnings that Stillwell and his men were inspecting passing trains in Tucson, carrying firearms under their coats and stating their intent to confront any member of the Earp family. News of Stillwell’s death reached his older brother, Simpson, who reportedly headed west intending to seek justice but never made it to Tombstone and returned without taking action.
After Stillwell’s death, warrants were issued for Wyatt Earp, Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, Jack Johnson, and Sherman McMaster. On May 16, 1882, the sheriff of Arapahoe County, Colorado, detained Wyatt and Warren Earp and Doc Holliday. Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan sought funds to travel to Colorado and return the men, but Governor Fremont instead gave the travel money to Pima County Sheriff Bob Paul. When Paul arrived in Denver, he served a warrant on Doc Holliday for his alleged role in Stillwell’s death.
Wyatt Earp, also in Denver, worried that returning Holliday to Tombstone would put him in danger. He reached out to Sheriff Bat Masterson in Trinidad, Colorado, who appealed directly to Governor Frederick W. Pitkin. Holliday was released from custody.
Although Sheriff Paul was aware of the standing warrants for the other Earp party members, he chose not to serve them and took no further action. Stillwell was buried in the old Tucson City Cemetery on March 28, 1882. The Tucson Weekly Citizen reported that his coffin was transported to the grave in an express wagon and that no mourners followed the procession.
When the cemetery was later relocated, his remains were reinterred in a mass grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Tucson.
